This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
Behavior | Care | Conduct | Heart | Man | Mind | Opinion | Public | World |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Behavior | Freedom | Giving | Individual | Organization | Power | Responsibility |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
Consciousness | Evolution | Pain | Suffering |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
More consequences for thought and action follow from the affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other question.
Action | Consequences | God | Question | Thought | God | Thought |
A person who reads and studies and converses on current events in science, philosophy, political will, in the process, escape from the dull self-centeredness, and his participatory awareness of life in its infinite vitality will tend to produce the excitement which is inherent in happiness. Unfortunately, thinking the interesting thoughts which create happiness is a disciplinary process which too few people employ.
Awareness | Events | Excitement | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Science | Self | Thinking | Will | Awareness | Happiness |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
True happiness, lasting happiness, lies only in god, “Having whom no other gain is greater.” In Him is the only safety, the only shelter, the only escape from all our fears. You have no other security in the world, no other freedom. The only true freedom lies in God.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Life is worth nothing if it is not a continuous overcoming of problems. Each problem that waits for a solution at your hand is a religious duty imposed upon you by life itself. Any escape from problems, physical or mental, is an escape from life, as there can be no life that is not full of problems.
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.
Destiny |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The final test of religious faith... is whether it will enable men to endure insecurity without complacency or despair, whether it can so interpret the ancient verities that they will not become mere escape hatches from responsibilities but instruments of insights into what civilization means.
Civilization | Complacency | Despair | Faith | Insecurity | Means | Men | Will |
Our actions are our own; their consequences belong to Heaven.
Consequences | Heaven |
A just war is in the long run far better for a nation’s soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acquiescence toward wrong or injustice. Moreover, though it is criminal for a nation not to prepare for war, so that it may escape the dreadful consequences of being defeated in war, it must always be remembered that even to be defeated in war is far better than never to have fought at all.
Better | Consequences | Injustice | Injustice | Peace | Soul | War | Wrong |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, and the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone... the final desolation of solitude in the phantasmal world of imagination, shuffling memories, and desires.
Desolation | Hell | Imagination | Nothing | Solitude | World |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.
Emotions | Means | Personality | Poetry |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
What is hell? Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone.
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men.
Consequences | Men | Wise |