This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch.
Gods are fragile things; they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense.
Common Sense | Science | Sense |
The trite objects of human efforts--possessions, outward success, luxury--have always seemed to me contemptible.
Luxury | Possessions | Success |
I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
Body | Death | Fear | God | Individual | Reflection | God |
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
Contrary to what many anti-intellectuals maintain, science is by nature a much more humble enterprise than any religion or other ideology. This must be so given the self-correcting mechanisms that are incorporated into the scientific process, regardless of the occasional failures of individual scientists.
Individual | Nature | Religion | Science | Self |
What we gain without effort does not satisfy like what comes through the sweat of our brow or the work of self-transformation. No berries taste as sweet as those we pick. No insight changes us as deeply as what we discover ourselves. Prayer might help, but walking the endless path of practice is the only way to a deep reward. Sometimes just the path is reward enough.
Effort | Enough | Insight | Practice | Prayer | Reward | Self | Taste | Work |
There is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. It is formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it dignifies as true, and from traditions, perceptions and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. Above all, authority can, indeed must, be analyzed.
A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.