This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
It is a prejudice to believe that knowledge is always rational, that there is no such thing as irrational knowledge. Actually, we apprehend a great deal more through feeling than by intellection.
To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life.
Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Mistake | Pain | Peace | Reason | Suffering | Happiness |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Personal growth is often the result not of doing something new, but of seeing the same things in a new light. We all have mental maps of our world that we mistake for the actual territory. By clinging on to old maps we fail to see the true lie of the land and get lost.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The dogma that “mental diseases are diseases of the brain” is a hangover from the materialism of the 1870s. It has become a prejudice which hinders all progress, with nothing to justify it.
Dogma | Justify | Materialism | Nothing | Prejudice | Progress |
A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
Conscience | Memory | Mistake | People |
The mistake the world is making with the simple peoples is to try and hurry them into political concepts they don’t understand and aren’t prepared to cope with. I know. I am a peasant myself.
Hurry | Mistake | World | Understand |
Stevie Smith, fully Florence Margaret Smith
Never try to reason the prejudice out of a person. It was not reasoned into them and cannot be reasoned out.
In summary, goals or end-states are not intrinsically valuable, even though they direct and explain action. Although having aims or goals is an important and unavoidable aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because this would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are valuable to achieve because they lead to further worthwhile activities.
Action | Aims | Goals | Important | Life | Life | Mistake | Value |