This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All the masters tell us that the reality of life - which our noisy waking consciousness prevents us from hearing - speaks to us chiefly in silence.
Consciousness | Life | Life | Reality |
For me, atheism’s roots are in a sober and modest assessment of where reason and evidence lead us. That means the real enemy is not religion as such, but any kind of system of belief that does not respect these limits on our thinking. For that reason, I want to engage with thoughtful, intelligent believers, and isolate extremists. But if we demonise all religion, such coalitions of the reasonable are not possible. Instead, we are likely to see moderate religious believers join ranks with fundamentalists, the enemies of their enemy, to resist what they see as an attempt to wipe out all forms of religious belief.
Belief | Enemy | Evidence | Means | Reason | Religion | Respect | System | Respect |
Jules Feiffer, fully Jules Ralph Feiffer
Be warned against all 'good' advice because 'good' advice is necessarily 'safe' advice, and though it will undoubtedly follow a sane pattern, it will very likely lead one into total sterility--one of the crushing problems of our time.
L. G. Elliott, fully Lloyd George Elliott
Act as though everything you do, rightly or wrongly, accurately or carelessly, may tip the scale of the bigger things of tomorrow for all of us, as indeed every act, potentially, can. Remember Enemies try to break through at the weakest point. Don't let it be on your sector
Tomorrow |
L. G. Elliott, fully Lloyd George Elliott
Act as though everything you do, rightly or wrongly, accurately or carelessly, may tip the scale of the bigger things of tomorrow for all of us, as indeed every act, potentially, can. Remember: Enemies try to break through at the weakest point. Don’t let it be on your sector.
Tomorrow |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
At one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished.
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. If you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. The name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.
Dignity | Invention | Man | Means | Men | Order | Poetry | Sense | Similitude | Story |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.
Advice |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride.
Michael Jordan, fully Michael Jeffrey Jordon, aka MJ, Air Jordan and His Airness
My advice is find fuel in failure. Sometimes failure gets you closer to where you want to be.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
A woman's advice has little value, but he who won't take it is a fool.
I'm always there to tell people that their life is not that bad. I wish it was easy to follow that advice It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.
Advice | Important | Life | Life | People | Friendship | Friends |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing.
Free enterprise | Freedom | Society | Will | Society |
Mikhail Naimy, also spelled Mikha'il Na'ima
So, think as if your every thought were to be etched in fire across the sky for all and everything to see. For so, in truth, it is. So speak as if the world entire were but a single ear intent on hearing what you say. And so, in truth, it is. Do as if your every deed were to recoil upon your heads. And, so in truth it does.So wish as if you were the wish. And so, in truth, you are. So live as if your God Himself had need of you his life to live. And so, in truth, he does.
God | Life | Life | Need | Thought | Truth | World | God | Think | Thought |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
True victory does not come from defeating an enemy, true victory comes from giving love and changing an enemies heart.
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Killing, cutting, slaughtering, destroying, injuring or abusing another's life is not Islam. But to each one of us is enjoined the Qurban, the sacrifice - the sacrifice of our Nafs, our base desires, our animosities, our egoism. Other than Allah and His Truth, every other thing must be the object of our sacrifice. His Word, His Qualities, His Traits, His Actions, His unique Three- thousand Qualities, - other than these, everything else are all enemies unto you and these must be sacrificed. And to wage total war against such enemies unto oneself, is Islam. Anger, hastiness, rage, fury, impatience, feelings of superiority of 'I' and 'you', pride, jealousy, treachery, selfishness, sorcery and black magic, mesmerism trickery, self-praise, conceit, titles, position and status, exclusiveness as between 'you' and 'I', falsehood, envy, - to cut away these base qualities and more, - is Islam. Such then is the formidable war within. This is one's very own battle, one's own sacrifice or Qurban, this is one's own war of purification, one's own purging of all that are enemies unto oneself. It is these which are the wars of Islam. Islam is certainly vehemently not a war which kills man or another human being or which slaughters or divides human kind or causes dissensions in human societies or annihilates humans. This is not Islam... For, Islam by its definition, has no enmity, no differences, no distinctions. To segregate and divide those who themselves divide and cause separation among the children of Adam, - is not Islam.
Cause | Children | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Object | Position | Qualities | Sacrifice | Superiority | Unique | War |