This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.
Justification | Man | Philosophy | Search | Selfishness |
Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.
Imagination | Men | World |
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatest which does not bow before children.
Children | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Any adequate philosophy of life must be based on the harmony of our given instincts.
Harmony | Life | Life | Philosophy |
The Problem - Myth might be defined simply as "other people's religion," to which an equivalent definition of religion would be "misunderstood mythology"... Like dreams, myths are productions of the human imagination. Their images, consequently, though derived from the material world and its supposed history, are, like dreams, revelations of the deepest hopes, desires and fears, potentialities and conflicts of the human will... Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors.
Dreams | History | Imagination | Myth | People | Religion | Will | World |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment, to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.
Contentment | Life | Life | Philosophy |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Contentment is not satisfaction. It is the grateful, faithful, fruitful use of what we have, little, or much. It is to take the cup of Providence, and call upon the name of the Lord. What the cup contains is its contents. To get all there is in the cup is the act and art of contentment. Not to drink because one has but half a cup, or because one does not like its flavor, or because some one else has silver to one's own glass, is to lose the contents; and that is the penalty, if not the meaning of discontent. No one is discontented who employs and enjoys to the utmost what he has. It is high philosophy to say, we can have just what we like, if we like what we have; but this much at least can be done, and this is contentment,--to have the most and best in life, by making the most and best of what we have.
Art | Contentment | Little | Lord | Meaning | Philosophy | Providence | Art |
The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry.
Creed | Dogma | Future | Illusion | Life | Life | Mankind | Philosophy | Poetry | Race | Religion | Rest | Science | Time | Tradition | Will | World |
Norman Mailer, fully Norman Kingsley Mailer
The greatest myths are never divorced from our deepest sense of reality – the primitive knowledge with which we are born. That kind of knowledge we are able to sense despite all the barriers of our modern development.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Sacred theology is superior to philosophy, both theoretically and practically; theoretically, because it is more perfect knowledge of God and His creatures; practically, because moral philosophy is insufficient to direct man to God as his last end.
God | Knowledge | Man | Philosophy | Sacred | Theology | God |
Religion does what philosophy could never do; it shows the equal dealings of Heaven to the happy and the unhappy, and levels all human enjoyments to nearly the same standard. It gives to both rich and poor the same happiness hereafter, and equal hopes to aspire after it.
Happy | Heaven | Philosophy | Religion | Happiness |
The difference between gossip and philosophy lies only in one's way of taking a fact.
Philosophy | Gossip |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
We should approach our nearest Problem or duty with concentrated energy and execute it to perfection. This should be our philosophy of life.
Duty | Energy | Life | Life | Perfection | Philosophy |
Knowledge, wisdom, erudition, arts, and elegance, what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to increase the happiness of the possessor? A mind rightly instituted in the school of philosophy, acquires at once the stability of the oak, and the flexibility of the osier. Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind.
Elegance | Erudition | Flexibility | Happy | Knowledge | Mankind | Mind | Philosophy | Present | Wisdom | Talent | Flexibility | Happiness |
Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.
Life | Life | Philosophy |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.
Philosophy | Wonder |