This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The meaning of life must be in the living of it. This is because, (a) in a sense, the meaning of one’s life is oneself, and (b) it is the person that has primary non-instrumental value. The individual has value and, consequently, so does his or her life and so do the processes that constitute that life. The finite processes of life have meaning, without the need of the Absolute.
Absolute | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Sense | Value |
Lu Xun, or Lu Hsün, pen name of Zhou Shuren
Young people, what need have you to follow the trendy slogans of these intellectual leaders? You ought better to gather some comrades and pool together all you energies; go forward in one common impetus, following what appears to be the path of survival. All together you will never be short of strength. If you encounter a deep forest, you can always hack your way through; you can open up the wilderness; you can dig wells in the desert. Why should you stick to old ruts and beg for guidance of these wretched guides?
Better | Guidance | Need | People | Strength | Survival | Will | Following | Guidance | Old |
We don't need a self-help guru to remind us we all have the power to change our lives. Would you like to lose weight or tone your body? Want to be kinder, gentler? How about becoming more intellectual, or more creative? No one can stop us from reaching these goals but ourselves. We set our own limits.
It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.
Books | Education | Important | Learning | Mind | Need | Training | Learn | Think | Value |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
If you won't be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for?
Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so we must see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
Brotherhood | Men | Mind | Need | Prejudice | Society | Understanding | Will | Society |