This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The vice of envy is… always a confession of inferiority.
Envy | Inferiority | Vice |
Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who understands values himself is justly undervalued by others.
Modesty |
Worshippers in spirit and truth are to be found in all confession and all churches, and they are recognizable by a sign, and they love one another, in a manner of speaking, not in spite of what separates them but in some way or other because of what separates them.
The principle of maximum diversity says that the laws of nature, and the initial conditions at the beginning of time, are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth. This is the confession of faith of a scientific heretic. Perhaps I may claim as evidence for progress in religion the fact that we no longer burn heretics.
Beginning | Diversity | Evidence | Faith | Life | Life | Progress | Religion | Universe |
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
It is my guiding confession that I believe the greatest error in economics is in seeing the economy as a stable, immutable structure.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Nowadays, as before, the public declaration and confession of Orthodoxy is usually encountered among dull-witted, cruel and immoral people who tend to consider themselves very important. Whereas intelligence, honesty, straightforwardness, good-naturedness and morality are qualities usually found among people who claim to be non-believers.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
We must, however, not deceive ourselves – this naive belief does not exist nowadays even among common people, and it cannot be revived by backwards oriented (rückwärts gerichtete) considerations and measures. Since to believe means to consider something true (fürwahrhalten), and the growing knowledge of the nature, proceeding forwards incessantly along incontestably reliable path, had led to the result that for a man educated at least slightly in natural sciences it is entirely (schlechterdings) impossible to consider as reliable many reports about extraordinary events contradicting natural laws, about miracles (Naturwunder) which used to be generally accepted as essential support and confirmation (Bekräftigung) of religious teachings and which people considered formerly as facts without critical examination (Bedenken). The one who takes his religion really seriously and cannot tolerate that it gets into contradiction with his knowledge (Wissen), is facing the question of conscience whether he can still honestly consider himself to be a member of religious community which in its confession (Bekenntnis) contains belief in miracles. For a certain period of time many a believer could find a kind of reconciliation in an effort to take the middle way and to restrict his belief to acceptance (Anerkennung) of few miracles, considered to be extremely important. However, such a position is not tenable for a long time. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely (zu Ende gehen muss).
Acceptance | Belief | Conscience | Contradiction | Doubt | Effort | Events | Knowledge | Man | Means | Miracles | People | Position | Question | Reconciliation | Religion | Science | Time |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
A generous and free-minded confession doth disable a reproach and disarm an injury.
Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an origincal affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.
Error | Example | History | Nature | Order | Power | Truth |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
It is only in solitude, when it has broken the thick crust of shame that separates us from one another and separates us all from God, that we have no secrets from God; only in solitude do we raise our hearts to the Heart of the Universe; only in solitude does the redeeming hymn of supreme confession issue from our soul.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Prayer is confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.
Admiring pursuit of the external is a confession of inferiority; and nothing thus holding itself inferior to things that rise and perish, nothing counting itself less honourable and less enduring than all else it admires could ever form any notion of either the nature or the power of God.
R. W. Dixon, fully Richard Watson Dixon
And being such the soul doth recognize The doubleness of nature, that there lies A soul occult in Nature, hidden deep As lies the soul of man in moveless sleep. And like a dream Broken in circumstance and foolish made, Through which howe’er the future world doth gleam, And floats a warning to the gathered thought, Like to a dream, Through sense and all by sense conveyed, Into our soul the shadow of that soul Doth float. Then are we lifted up erect and whole In vast confession to that universe Perceived by us: our soul itself transfers Thither by instinct sure; it swiftly hails The mighty spirit similar; it sails In the divine expansion; it perceives Tendencies glorious, distant; it enweaves Itself with excitations more that thought Unto that soul unveiled and yet unsought.
Future | Instinct | Man | Sense | Soul | Spirit | Warning | World | Circumstance |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
O God, my countenance falleth, When I remember all wherein I have provoked Thee. For all the good which Thou hast bestowed on me I have requited Thee with evil. For Thou hast created me not from necessity, but from grace, And not by compulsion of circumstance But by favour and love. And before I was, With Thy mercies didst Thou precede me, And breathe into me a spirit and call me into being, And after I came forth into the light of the world Thou didst not forsake me, But like a tender father didst Thou watch over my growing up, And as a nurse fostereth a suckling didst Thou foster me. Upon the breasts of my mother Thou madest me rest trustfully, And with Thy delight didst satisfy me. And when I essayed my feet, Thou didst strengthen my standing And didst take me in Thine arms and teach me to walk. And wisdom and discipline didst Thou impart to me, And from all trouble and distress didst Thou relieve me, And at the time of the passing away of Thy wrath In the shadow of Thy hand didst Thou hide me, And from how many sorrows concealed from mine eyes didst Thou deliver me! For before the hardship came Thou didst prepare the remedy for my distress all unbeknown to me, And when from some injury I was unguarded, Thou didst guard me, And when I came within the fangs of lions Thou didst break the teeth of the whelps and deliver me thence, And when evil and constant distress anguished me, Thou hast freely healed me, And when Thy dreadful judgment came upon the world, Thou didst deliver me from the sword And didst save me from the pestilence, And in famine didst feed me, And with plenty sustain me. And when I provoked Thee, Thou didst chastise me as a father chastiseth his son, And when I called out from the depths of my sorrow, My soul was precious in Thy sight, Nor didst Thou send me empty away. But all this didst Thou yet exceed and add to When Thou gavest me a perfect faith To believe that Thou art the God of Truth And that Thy Law is true and Thy prophets are true. For Thou hast not set my portion with the rebels and those who rise up against Thee And the foolish multitude that blaspheme Thy name; Who make mock of Thy law, And contend with Thy servants, And give the lie to Thy prophets, Making a show of innocence But with cunning below, Exhibiting a pure and stainless soul, While underneath lurketh the bright leprous spot: Like to a vessel full of shameful things, Washed on the outside with the waters of deceit, And defiling all that is within.
Call the bald man, Boy; make the sage thy toy; greet the youth with solemn face; praise the fat man for his grace.
Little |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Every sin is a greater injury to him who does it than to him who suffers it.
Conscience | Day | Hope | Mercy |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell