This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The life each of us lives is the life within the limits of our own thinking. To have life more abundant, we must think in the limitless terms of abundance." - Thomas Dreier
"What is called affluence - the consequence of the type of rapid economic development which occurred from about the middle of the nineteenth century - is in a real sense an abundance not just of serious problems which machines cannot solve, but of hopeless poverty: the physical insecurity, personal unhappiness, the intensified morality, the sense of being dwarfed by vast and uncontrollable physical, mechanical and corporate structures, the hatred and contempt of other peoples, the lack of opportunity for contemplation, the loss of community life." - Charles Richard Hensman
"In general, one cannot judge the true extent of a person’s fortune by outward appearances. The little a righteous man has may be far better than the noisy abundance in which many lawless delight. The modest possessions of a righteous man make him much happier than the great fortunes of many evildoers about which so much ado is made in the world." - Samson Raphael Hirsch
"For centuries and centuries the world has been struggling to divide up economic scarcity, and for the first time we have the tools of abundance with which to meet mankind's basic economic and material needs. If we will use these tools intelligently, with a sense of social and moral responsibility, they will enable us to solve mankind's basic material needs. Then we can devote greater time and energy and effort to the facilitation of man's growth as a social and cultural and spiritual being, which is the real meaning of life on this earth." -
"Death fills me with its abundance. What is this flood, overcoming body and sense? I feel the walls of my skull crack, the barriers part, the sun-flood enter - Love, lore, not lost, only magnified, floating eternal seas of essence - before and behind births and deaths, spiritual gravitation, the emergence ever-more expanding... O my questioner! you do not suspect me - you suspect yourself: to-morrow, seeing yourself, you will see me, and the illumined spirit, passing the portal, God-grown, will hail me proudly." - Horace Traubel
"There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment; the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier. The ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity, not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television, but a real expansion of our spirit." - Freeman John Dyson
"The answer to the accumulating casualties of the welfare state’s “war” on poverty is the home-grown, grass-roots, all-volunteer army of ordinary people armed with food, books, skills and a determination to make a difference. The entrepreneurial creativity that catapulted this nation to a position of global leadership can now be harnessed to do for community what it did for productivity. When we provide imaginative, entrepreneurial alternatives to the welfare state, we won’t need to confront it. It will simply wither away. And the rewards of this work are a bounty of spiritual renewal: an abundance of love, meaning and connectedness." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"Not what we have, but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn
"We live in a biochemical, neurophysiological, resonant quantum soup. If this is true, the responsibility for what we have for our inner life is enormous, and extends far beyond one’s own personal and spiritual development. Whatever our inner experience might be in terms of love and passion, hate and greed, abundance and longing, or any other human qualities may well not be ours alone." - Jeanne Achterberg
"But perhaps you are deceived by the fact that many who know not God possess wealth in abundance, are full of honors, and enjoy great authority. These unhappy men are uplifted the higher, that their fall may be greater." - Maracus Minucius Felix
"The food of events is thought. Your habitual thoughts nourish your conditions and cause them to increase and multiply. Fear thoughts, gloomy and critical thoughts, selfish thoughts, are the food of unhappiness, sickness, and failure. When you supply this food in abundance these things come into your life – because they seek their food. Thoughts of God, thoughts of kindness, of optimism, and good will, are the food of health, joy, and success; and if you furnish a bountiful supply of this food you will attract these things instead." - Emmet Fox
"How can true happiness proceed from wealth, which in its acquisition causes pain; ;in loss, affliction; in abundance, folly." - Hitopadesa, translated means Book of Good Counsels NULL
"Always think of the days of scarcity during the days of abundance, so that you will not long for the days of abundance of scarcity." - Li Ju-chen
"A prince… who wishes to guard against conspiracies should fear those on whom he has heaped benefits quite as much, and even more, than those whom he has wronged; for the latter lack the convenient opportunities which the former have in abundance. The intention of both is the same for the thirst of dominion is as great as that of revenge, and even greater. A prince, therefore, should never bestow so much authority upon his friends but that there should always be a certain distance between them and himself, and that there should always be something left for them to desire." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"Your words are the seed, your soul is the farmer, the world is your field; let the farmer look to the sowing, that the soil may abundance yield." - Nasir Khusraw, fully Abu Mo’in Hamid ad-Din Nasir ibn Khusraw al-Qubadiani or Nāsir Khusraw Qubādiyānī, also spelled as Nasir Khusrow and Naser Khosrow
"Whatever you give to others, give with love and reverence. Gifts must be given in abundance, with joy, humility, and compassion." - Taittiriya Upanishad
"The finest gift you can give anyone is encouragement. Yet, almost no one gets the encouragement they need to grow to their full potential. If everyone received the encouragement they need to grow, the genius in most everyone would blossom and the world would produce abundance beyond the wildest dreams." - Sidney Madwed
"It is not what we have but what we enjoy that constitutes our abundance." - John Antoine Petit-Senn
"Abundance of money is a trial for a man." - Moroccan Proverbs
"A grateful person is a powerful person, for gratitude generates power. All abundance is based on being grateful for what we have." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"When we have only a little we should be satisfied; for this reason, that those best enjoy abundance who are contented with the least." - Epicurus NULL
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"A man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seed will fall therein and will continue to produce its kind." -
"In a closed system of energy based on fear and lack, abundance in one place creates lack in another. In an open system of energy, based on faith and love, abundance begets more abundance, and creativity flourishes." - Joan Borysenko
"[The Depression] is not a crisis of poverty, but a crisis of abundance. It is not the harshness and the niggardliness of nature which are oppressing us, but our own incompetence and wrong-headedness which hinder us from making use of the bountifulness of inventive science and cause us to be overwhelmed by its generous fruits." - John Maynard Keynes
"We live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create. Lord of all things, he is not lord of himself. He feels lost amid his own abundance. With more means at its disposal, more knowledge, more techniques than ever, it turns out that the world today goes the same way as the worst of worlds that have been; it simply drifts." - José Ortega y Gasset
"The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation in such a realization of transcendence, infinity, and abundance, as this of which the upanishadic authors tell. Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being. And the second service, then, is cosmological: of representing the universe and whole spectacle of nature, both as known to the mind and as beheld by the eye, as an epiphany of such kind that when lightning flashes, or a setting sun ignites the sky, or a deer is seen standing alerted, the exclamation "Ah!" may be uttered as a recognition of divinity." - Joseph Campbell
"You pray in your distress and in your need; when that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance." - Kahlil Gibran
"More mass media are controlled by fewer monolithic corporations than ever before. The choices proliferate, and yet there's little of substance to see or hear. In the midst of abundance, we are starving for substance." - Michael Toms
"I am told that nothing that we do on earth, and nothing that we make on earth, is in as great abundance as force. We now have 30,000 pounds of destructive force, TNT equivalent, available for every human being on earth. We don't have 30,000 pounds of food or medicine or art or books or any of the things that ennoble life, but we have 30,000 pounds of instant force for every human being on earth." - Norman Cousins
"It is perhaps not to be wondered at, since fortune is ever changing her course and time is infinite, that the same incidents should occur many times, spontaneously. For, if the multitude of elements is unlimited, fortune has in the abundance of her material an ample provider of coincidences; and if, on the other hand, there is a limited number of elements from which events are interwoven, the same things must happen many times, being brought to pass by the same agencies. " - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Silence is more profitable than abundance of speech." - Ptah-hotep, aka Ptahhotpe or Ptah-Hotep NULL
"Troubles are usually the brooms and shovels that smooth the road to a good man’s fortune, of which he little dreams; and many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away hunger." - Saint Basil, aka Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great NULL
"Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abundance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose. Of course, as different people have different purposes in life, what is relevant to the purpose of one person might not be relevant to the purpose of another....The degree of simplification is a matter for each individual to settle for himself." - Duane Elgin
"Today, with the abundance of books available, it is the mark of a truly educated man to know what not to read. … Feed only on the best" - Ezra Taft Benson
"The one thing necessary is always to be found by the soul in the present moment. There is no need to choose between prayer and silence, privacy or conversation, reading or writing, reflection or the abandonment of thought, the frequentation or avoidance of spiritual people, abundance or famine, illness or health, life or death; the one thing necessary is what each moment produces by God’s design." - John-Pierre de Cassaude
"A man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind." - James Allen
"Religion must be used in furthering great works of justice and reform. It must be used to establish right relations between different groups of men, and thus to make a reality of brotherhood. It must be used to abolish poverty, the breeding ground of all misery and crime, by distributing equably among men the abundance of the soil. And it must be used to get rid of war and to establish enduring peace. Here is the supreme test of the effectiveness of religion." - John Haynes Holmes
"Riches are not from an abundance of wordly goods but from a contented mind." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"People believe that through the American way of life they can work together to encourage wider ownership of economic activities. In this way, they believe they can develop an economy of abundance which will provide a maximum of security and freedom." - Murray D. Lincoln, fully Murray Danforth Lincoln
"Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty." - Napoleon Hill
"The very essence of the present economic system is, that the worker can never enjoy the well-being he has produced, and that the number of those who live at his expense will always augment. The more a country is advanced in industry, the more this number grows. Inevitably, industry is directed, and will have to be directed, not towards what is needed to satisfy the needs of all, but towards that which, at a given moment, brings in the greatest temporary profit to a few. Of necessity, the abundance of some will be based on the poverty of others, and the straitened circumstances of the greater number will have to be maintained at all costs, that there may be hands to sell themselves for a part only of that which they are capable of producing; without which, private accumulation of capital is impossible!" - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"If the scientist turns his attention from the present state of the universe to the future, even the very remote future, he finds himself constrained to recognize, both in the macrocosm and in the microcosm, that the world is growing old. In the course of billions of years, even the apparently inexhaustible quantities of atomic nuclei lost utilizable energy and, so to speak, matter becomes like an extinct and scoriform volcano. And the thought comes spontaneously that if this present cosmos, today so pulsating with rhythm and life is, as we have seen, insufficient to explain itself, with still less reason, will any such explanation be forthcoming from the cosmos over which, in its own way, the shadow of death will have passed. Let us now turn our attention to the past. The farther back we go, the more matter presents itself as always more enriched with free energy, and as a theater of vast cosmic disturbances. Thus everything seems to indicate that the material universe had in finite times a mighty beginning, provided as it was with an indescribably vast abundance of energy reserves, in virtue of which, at first rapidly and then with increasing slowness, it evolved into its present state. This naturally brings to mind two questions: Is science in a position to state when this mighty beginning of the cosmos took place? And, secondly, what was the initial or primitive state of the universe? The most competent experts in atomic physics, in collaboration with astronomers and astrophysicists, have attempted to shed light on these two difficult but extremely interesting problems." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
"The greatest speakers have usually been remarkable for the abundance of their ideas and their economy of words." - Ralph C. Smedley
"It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Whoever does not, sometimes or other, give his full consent, his full and joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; can only walk on its edge, and one day, when the judgment is given, will have been neither alive nor dead." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"It is much more a lack of fun which batters us than over abundance and indulgence" - Raoul Vaneigem
"Humankind has been seduced by a temporary abundance of cheap fossil energy into ignoring limits to Earth" - Richard Heinberg
"Modern industrial technology has certainly accomplished miracles, but we tend to ignore the fact that it is, for the most part, merely a clever set of means for using a temporary abundance of cheap fossil energy to speed up and economize things we had already been doing for a very long time." - Richard Heinberg