This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag
If in the past Christianity, Judaism, or Islam placed itself at the center of the search for truth and unity, there is now a shift away from this kind of tribal centricty to the notion that it is God who is at the center and all the religious traditions of the world must inevitably intersect at this center. One can no longer speak about one’s faith outside the ambience of the plurality of religious traditions.
I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.
The art of crisis management, now widely acknowledged to be the essence of statecraft, owes its vogue to the merger of politics and spectacle. Propaganda seeks to create in the public a chronic sense of crisis, which in turn justifies the expansion of executive power and the secrecy surrounding it.
Art | Politics | Power | Public | Secrecy | Sense | Art | Crisis | Propaganda |
Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms, thou mayest always stand fast in the Lord within thee, to that degree as if thy soul had already entered the always present now of eternity.
New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL
It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.
Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |
Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered prayer.
Desire | Experience | Fulfillment | Joy | Prayer | Reality | Will |
Eternity is another word for unity. In it, past and future are not apart; here is everywhere, and now goes on forever. The opposite of eternity is diffusion not time. Eternity does not begin when time is at its end. Time is eternity broken into space, like a ray of light refracted in the water… unity is a task, not a condition. The world lies in strife, in discord, in divergence. Unity is beyond not within reality.
Eternity | Future | Light | Past | Reality | Space | Time | Unity | World |
Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
The theory of war as an apt and proportionate means of solving international conflicts is now out of date.
Gilda Radner, fully Gilda Susan Radner
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
The Buddha, that is now “Awakened One,” diagnosed the human condition in the following way. Life is out of balance and characterized by suffering because all things are impermanent, and yet we desire things as if they were permanent. We each view our own self as if it too were permanent and completely independent from our selves, and so we think of our self as competing for those things with other discrete selves. Everything that we desire will ultimately pass away – we cannot hold on to anything in the end, not even our own bodies and minds – so our inappropriate desires are frustrated and we suffer, only to be reborn again into anew life of desire and suffering. To break the cycle of rebirth (samsara), we must overcome our ignorance about the true nature of things, cut the root of desire, and give up attachment to self, for we are anatman, no-self.
Balance | Desire | Ignorance | Life | Life | Nature | Self | Suffering | Will | Following | Think |
Oscar Romero, formally Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez
No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin.
The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.
Absolute | Abstract | Evidence | Existence | Knowledge | Mankind | Truth | Truths |
George Sand, pen name for Amandine Lucte Aurore Dupin, Baronne Dudevant
One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness - simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial top a point, love of work, and above all a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
Conscience | Courage | Happy | Love | Self | Self-denial | Work | Happiness |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
In the world from now on, neutrality is only a word for deceiving people.
Neutrality | People | World |
Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner
The dominant fact of the twentieth century is that the entire population of the earth is now included within a single community. There are no more ocean barriers, no mountain barriers, no barriers of the north and south poles, no barriers of any kind. Thers is only one race now - it is the human race.
Earth | Human race | Race |