This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Rarely they rise by virtue’s aid who lie plunged in the depth of helpless poverty." - Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
"By mutual confidence and mutual aid great deeds are done, and great discov'ries made." - Alexander Pope
"One ungrateful man does an injury to all who stand in need of aid." - Publius Syrus
"Give aid to all, expect it from none." - Berthold Auerbach
"What is Zen in the art of helping? It is easier to say what it is not than more positively to describe the essence. It is to avoid the boosting of the ego through ‘good works’. It is to aid oneself and others in the pursuit of the good life; to discover and uncover new vigour and freshness in the art of living; to uncover the primal ability of love. Living in the here and now is a major ingredient." - David A. Brandon
"The alternative to recalling and interpreting dreams is not always pleasant. Individuals cannot expect to drift forever. If they do not puzzle out their identity, and the direction of their lives by the aid of their dreams, then they may be brought, by the relentless action of their own pent-up souls, into some crisis which requires that they come to terms with themselves. It may be a medical crisis. It may be the end of a marriage or of a job. It may be depression or withdrawal." - Edgar Cayce, known as the "Sleeping Prophet"
"Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is started, all that is within you will come to your assistance." - Robert Collier
"Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil." - Joseph Gerrald
"Disease is not so much the effect of noxious, external forces - the 'bugs,' both literal and figurative in our lives - as it is the faulty effort of our minds and bodies to deal with them... already reside in our bodies. When our responses to problems in life are excessive or deficient, the central nervous system and hormones act on our immune defenses in such a way that the microbes aid and abet disease. The balance is upset between us and our resident pathogens." - Blair Justice
"Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
"The chief aid to memory is order." - Simonides, aka Simonedes of Ceos NULL
"The suggestion that plants may communicate with the aid of hormones that drift through the air is nothing short of revolutionary. It makes them look much more sensitive, far more like animals, than the textbooks would have us believe." - Lyall Watson
"Mercy is not ordinarily held to consist in pronouncing judgment on another man’s deserts, but in relieving his necessities; in giving aid to the poor, not in inquiring how good they are." - Ambrose, aka Saint Ambrose, fully Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
"Suffering was a curse from which man fled, not it becomes a purification of the soul, a sacred trial sent by Eternal Love, a divine dispensation meant to sanctify and ennoble us, an acceptable aid to faith, a strange initiation into happiness." - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"That which is `provable’ is not Reality but perception or mentation only. Reality is subjective and knowable only by virtue of identity with the known. “Provables’ belong to the classification and level of limitation and are arbitrary abstractions whose sole `reality’ is merely the consequence of selection and identification. The phenomenal is not the same as the noumenal [understood by intellectual intuition without the aid of the senses – opposed to phenomenon.]" - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"Ethical life and service are an aid, but they are not an end in themselves. The end is to be one with God." - Prabhavananda, fully Swami Prabhavananda NULL
"The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"We do not ask the mountain’s aid to crack the walnut." - Wole Soyinka, fully Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka
"Humanity is in a precarious balance between the forces of violence and the forces of peace. It is by no means clear at this time which of these forces will prevail. We do not ask, however, whether religion will not become an aid to the forces of peace or cooperation." - Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner
"Where love, trust, mutual aid, equality, and empathy are not linked, the boot, whip, warring, modern inquisitors, and their epigones will supply a rhetoric that accepts humanity's fate as tragic while doing everything to perpetuate that tragedy." - Marcus G. Raskin
"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds" - Aristotle NULL
"The path of Knowledge is only to dive inward with the mind, not uttering the word ‘I’, and to question whence, as ‘I’, it rises. To meditate ‘This is not I’ or ‘That I am’ may be an aid, but you can it form the enquiry? When the mind, inwardly enquiring, ‘Who am I?’ attains the heart, something of Itself manifests as ‘I-I’, so that the individual ‘I’ must bow in shame. Though manifesting, it is not ’I’ by nature by Perfection, and this is the Self." - Ramana Maharshi, fully Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
"He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; and he who profits by a superior understanding raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with it." - Edmund Burke
"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in a great measure, the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals; they supply them or they totally destroy them." - Edmund Burke
"So the spiritual life is lived only by the aid of a spiritual equilibrium which we call Being led by the Spirit. And the self-centered person seems to have none of it. He does not sense it at all. He leans only towards self, and cannot be made to obey Spirit which has no centered interests. But It is there, and in due time will come out and lead him in Its way." - Jacob L. Beilhart
"Words, like glass, obscure when they do not aid vision." - Joseph Joubert
"You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful." - Marie Curie, fully Marie Skłodowska-Curie, originally Manya Sklodowska
"Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God." - Martin Luther
"All the elements, whose aid man calls in, will sometimes become his masters." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Men grind and grind in the mill of a truism, and nothing comes out but what was put in. But the moment they desert the tradition for a spontaneous thought, then poetry, wit, hope, virtue, learning, anecdote, all flock to their aid." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In religion, as in human learning, we need a gradual introduction, beginning by the more easily learned matters and the first elements. The Creator comes to our aid so that our eyes, accustomed to darkness, may be gradually opened to the full light of truth." - Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL
"It is good to have a reminder of death before us, for it helps us to understand the impermanence of life on this earth, and this understanding may aid us in preparing for our own death. He who is well prepared is he who knows that he is nothing compared with Wakan-Tanka who is everything; then he knows that world which is real." - Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
"To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people as equally incorporated with and essential to the success of the general system; to avoid the slightest interference with the right of conscience or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy the other salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press; to observe economy in public expenditures; to liberate the public resources by an honorable discharge of the public debts; to keep within the requisite limits a standing military force, always remembering that an armed and trained militia is the firmest bulwark of republics — that without standing armies their liberty can never be in danger, nor with large ones safe; to promote by authorized means improvements friendly to agriculture, to manufactures, and to external as well as internal commerce; to favor in like manner the advancement of science and the diffusion of information as the best aliment to true liberty; to carry on the benevolent plans which have been so meritoriously applied to the conversion of our aboriginal neighbors from the degradation and wretchedness of savage life to a participation of the improvements of which the human mind and manners are susceptible in a civilized state — as far as sentiments and intentions such as these can aid the fulfillment of my duty, they will be a resource which can not fail me." - James Madison
"Is it worse to kill someone than to let someone die? It seems obvious to common sense that it is worse. We allow people to die, for example, when we fail to contribute money to famine-relief efforts; but even if we feel somewhat guilty, we do not consider ourselves murderers. Nor do we feel like accessories to murder when we fail to give blood, sign an organ-donor card, or do any of the other things that could save lives. Common sense tells us that, while we may not kill people, our duty to give them aid is much more limited." - James Rachels
"Family life may be marked by exclusiveness,suspicion, and jealousy as to those without, and yet be a model of amity and mutual aid within. Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends on the habits and aims of the group." - John Dewey
"The educative value of manual activities and of laboratory exercises, as well as of play, depends upon the extent in which they aid in bringing about a sensing of the meaning of what is going on. In effect, if not in name, they are dramatizations." - John Dewey
"Small aids to individuals, large aid to masses." - Maria Mitchell
"To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator." - Maria Montessori
"We are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselves — such a friend ought to be — do not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures." - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"The idea inherent in all idealistic metaphysics–that the world is in some sense a product of the mind–is thus turned into its opposite: the mind is a product of the world, of the processes of nature. Hence, according to popular Darwinism, nature does not need philosophy to speak for her: nature, a powerful and venerable deity, is ruler rather than ruled. Darwinism ultimately comes to the aid of rebellious nature in undermining any doctrine, theological or philosophical, that regards nature itself as expressing a truth that reason must try to recognize. The equating of reason with nature, by which reason is debased and raw nature exalted, is a typical fallacy of the era of rationalization. Instrumentalized subjective reason either eulogizes nature as pure vitality or disparages it as brute force, instead of treating it as a text to be interpreted by philosophy that, if rightly read, will unfold a tale of infinite suffering. Without committing the fallacy of equating nature and reason, mankind must try to reconcile the two. In traditional theology and metaphysics, the natural was largely conceived as the evil, and the spiritual or supernatural as the good. In popular Darwinism, the good is the well-adapted, and the value of that to which the organism adapts itself is unquestioned or is measured only in terms of further adaptation. However, being well adapted to one’s surroundings is tantamount to being capable of coping successfully with them, of mastering the forces that beset one. Thus the theoretical denial of the spirit’s antagonism to nature–even as implied in the doctrine of interrelation between the various forms of organic life, including man–frequently amounts in practice to subscribing to the principle of man’s continuous and thoroughgoing domination of nature. Regarding reason as a natural organ does not divest it of the trend to domination or invest it with greater potentialities for reconciliation. On the contrary, the abdication of the spirit in popular Darwinism entails the rejection of any elements of the mind that transcend the function of adaptation and consequently are not instruments of self-preservation. Reason disavows its own primacy and professes to be a mere servant of natural selection. On the surface, this new empirical reason seems more humble toward nature than the reason of the metaphysical tradition. Actually, however, it is arrogant, practical mind riding roughshod over the ‘useless spiritual,’ and dismissing any view of nature in which the latter is taken to be more than a stimulus to human activity. The effects of this view are not confined to modern philosophy." - Max Horkheimer
"Shall we educate ourselves in what is known, and then casting away all we have acquired, turn to ignorance for aid to guide us among the unknown?" - Michael Faraday
"The US government has given over $200 billion dollars in military aid to some eighty nations since World War II. US weapons sales abroad have grown to about $10 billion a year and compose about 70 percent of all arms sold on the international marketplace. Two million foreign troops and hundreds of thousands of foreign police and paramilitary have been trained, equipped, and financed by the United States. Their purpose has not been to defend their countries from outside invasion but to protect foreign investors and the ruling elites of the recipient nations from their own potentially rebellious populations." - Michael Parenti
"A nation as such does not give aid to another nation. More precisely, the common citizens of our country, through their taxes, give to the privileged elites of another country. As someone once said: foreign aid is when the poor people of a rich country give money to the rich people of a poor country." - Michael Parenti
"If you're lucky, in some point in the future when you're in need of guidance or perhaps moral support, you may cross paths with a suitable mentor. Even luckier, you'll realize you had one in your life all along and you'll gain a new appreciation for how you benefited from that relationship. The luckiest relationship of all, of course, is a combination of the two. You've had help all along, and as the path widens or narrows, whatever the case may be, new and powerful influences will enter your life and aid your progress. In my experience, a mentor doesn't necessarily tell you what to do, but more importantly: tells you what they did or might do, then trusts you to draw your own conclusions and act accordingly. If you succeed, they'll take one step back and if you fail, they'll take one step closer. Whatever it is they teach you, pass it on." - Michael J. Fox
"Indomitable perseverance is the highest offering to my Guru. The best way to please Him is to endure the hardship of meditation! Abiding in this cave, alone, is the noblest service to the Dakinis! To devote myself to the Holy Dharma is the best service to Buddhism -- to devote my life to meditation, thus to aid my helpless, sentient fellow beings! To love death and sickness is a blessing through which to cleanse one's sins; to refuse forbidden food helps one to attain realization and enlightenment; to repay my Father Guru's bounties I meditate, and meditate again." - Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
"There comes to your aid and to do your bidding, with the development of the sixth sense, a 'guardian angel' who will open to you at all times the door to the temple of wisdom." - Napoleon Hill
"There aid so few that resist the allurements and luxuries of the table, that the usual civilities at a meal are very like being politely assisted to the grave." - Nathaniel Parker Willis
"Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries." - Nicholas D. Kristof, fully Nicholas Donabet Kristof