This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt... It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.
Debt | Law | Life | Life | Mathematics | Nature | Tomorrow | Will |
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways... But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consist in being perceived.
Existence | Ideas | Imagination | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Words |
If any hesitate in his Words, help him not, nor Prompt him without [being asked]. Interrupt him not, nor Answer him till his Speech is ended.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Most men tend to imprison themselves without the help of authorities.
Men |
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
Despair | Men | Recklessness |
The greatest service we can perform for others is to help them to help themselves.
Service |
Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as “a permanent adversarial culture” challenging the present, demanding a new future. It is a race in which we can all choose to participate, or to just watch. But we should know that our choice will help determine the outcome.
Choice | Culture | Future | Power | Present | Race | Wealth | Will |
Sweetness of spirit and sunshine is famous for dispelling fears and difficulties; patience is a mighty help to the burden-bearer.
John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
Man is by nature a learning animal. Birds fly, fish swim; man thinks and learns. Therefore, we do not need to “motivate” children into learning, by wheedling, bribing, or bullying. We do not need to keep picking away at their minds to make sure they are learning. What we need to do, and all we need to do, is bring as much of the world as we can into the school and the classroom; give children as much help and guidance as they need and ask for; listen respectfully when they feel like talking; and then get out of the way. We can trust them to do the rest.
Children | Guidance | Learning | Man | Nature | Need | Rest | Talking | Trust | World | Guidance |
We are all interconnected and help being one another into the expression of our full potential through words, thoughts, and deeds that are unimaginable in their simplicity and untraceable in their complexity…Integrity means wholeness. Actions are whole when they conform to inner believes.
Deeds | Integrity | Means | Simplicity | Wholeness | Words | Deeds |
There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God.
Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.
You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself.