This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause; a motion, without a mover; a circle, without a centre; a time, without an eternity; a second, without a first: these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it; and that which is made, is, while that which made it is not! This folly is infinite!" - Jeremy Taylor
"As long as we, in philosophy, ask questions concerning reality, while we are bound in the illusion of our relative standpoint, and then try to deal with these faculty questions by means of the intellect, which is the mind functioning in the realm of relativity, it is quite impossible to come to a realization of living truth." - J. J. van der Leeuw
"That the truths of the Bible have the power of awakening an intense moral feeling in every human being; that they make bad men good, and send a pulse of healthful feeling through all the domestic, civil, and social relations; that they teach men to love right, and hate wrong, and seek each other's welfare as children of a common parent; that they control the baleful passions of the heart, and thus make men proficient in self-government; and finally that they teach man to aspire after conformity to a being of infinite holiness, and fill him with hopes more purifying, exalted, and suited to his nature than any other book the world has ever known - these are facts as incontrovertible as the laws of philosophy, or the demonstrations of mathematics." - Francis Wayland
"Purposes evolve from men’s needs... Philosophy is anthropocentric." - Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire
"Knowledge of our duties is the most useful part of philosophy." - Richard Whately
"Philosophy is like the ocean: there are pearls in the depths, but many divers find nothing for all their exertion and perish in the attempt." - Zerahia Ha Yevani, aka Zerahiah the Greek or acronymistic nickname "Ra'ZaH" NULL
"It is a consoling fact that, in the end, the moral independence of mankind remains indestructible. Never has it been possible for a dictatorship to enforce one religion or one philosophy upon the whole world. Nor will it ever be possible, for the spirit always escapes from servitude; refuses to think in accordance with prescribed forms, to become shallow and supine at the word of command, to allow uniformity to be permanently imposed upon it." - Stefan Zweig
"People who lead fulfilling lives generally have found a sense of “home” in what they do. They have a philosophy of life that connects them to a larger vision. They accept that life is a continuing challenge. More often than not, they are able to live according to their own schedules, choosing work that is interesting and complex enough to keep them engaged. They get excited about being effective and about being stretched to learn new things. They have a few good friends who understand their vision and perhaps even share common aspirations. They are not driven by urgency, competition, or the demands of the ego." - Carol Adrienne
"I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"All genuine philosophy is, in the end if not consciously in the beginning, a quest for God." - André Bremond
"We think for a landlady considering a lodger it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"In wonder all philosophy began; in wonder it ends; and admiration fills up the interspace. But the first wonder is the offspring of ignorance: the last is the parent of adoration." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"As a philosophy, Pessimism is self-destructive. The mind which conceives the good and the ideal is made in the same breath to deny their value." - Martin D’Arcy, fully Fr. Martin Cyril D'Arcy
"Philosophy has the task and the opportunity of helping banish the concept that human destiny here and now is of slight importance in comparison with some supernatural destiny." - John Dewey
"An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy." - Stephen A. Erickson
"Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why." - Eric Gill, fully Arthur Eric Rowton Gill
"In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centering on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next it moved to Europe, where it became a culture, and, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise." - Richard Halverson, fully Richard Christian Halverson
"The idea of growth for its own sake is precisely the philosophy of the cancer cell." - Sydney J. Harris
"This is the difference between religion and philosophy. Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable; philosophy ends with the sense of the ineffable. Religion begins where philosophy ends." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been translating my thoughts into prose and verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song; all of these I have tried. But I feel that I haven’t given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, “My day’s work is done.” But I cannot say, “My life is done.” My day’s work will recommence the next morning. the tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes upon the twilight, but opens upon the dawn." - Victor Hugo
"Philosophy is only a matter of passionate vision rather than of logic - logic only finding reasons for the vision afterwards." - William James
"Sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy." - William James
"The noblest quality and highest in rank of all human activities is philosophy… The philosopher’s aim is his theoretical studies is to ascertain the truth; in his practical knowledge, to conduct himself in accordance with that truth." - Rasa’il al-Kindi
"The continual pursuit of meanings – wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings – is philosophy." - Susanne Langer, fully Susanne Katherina Langer née Knauth
"We have mistaken our abstractions for concrete realities… The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with its simple location in space and time, on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact. Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists who accept matter and mind on an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind into matter and those who put matter inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century." - John Locke
"Life is a mission. Every other definition of life is false, and leads all who accept it astray. Religion, science, philosophy, though still at variance upon many points, all agree in this, that every existence is an aim." - Joseph Mazzini, aka Giuseppe Mazzini
"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." -
"To approach the living question with the mind alone is impossible. The intellect must be coupled with feeling in order to stir a person to authentic inquiry. Real philosophy recognizes that ideas have sensations and emotions connected with them, and that one responds to them with the whole of oneself." - Jacob Needleman
"The most disappointing feature of working for a cause is that so few people have a philosophy of life." - Jeanette Rankin
"What one decides to do in a crisis depends upon one’s philosophy of life, and that philosophy cannot be changed by an incident. If one hasn’t any philosophy in a crisis, others make the decision." - Jeanette Rankin
"It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"The roots of ultimate insights are found not on the level of discursive thinking, but on the level of wonder and radical amazement, in the depth of awe, in our sensitivity to the mystery, in our awareness of the ineffable. It is the level on which the great things happen to the soul, where the unique insights of art, religion, and philosophy come into being." - Fritz A. Rothschild
"Since everything that comes into the human minds enters through the gates of sense, man’s first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"In the world He appears to me as the mysterious, marvelous creative Force; within me He reveals Himself as ethical Will. In the world He is impersonal Force; within me He reveals Himself as Personality. The God who is known through philosophy and the God whom I experience as ethical Will do not coincide. They are one; but how they are one I do not understand." - Albert Schweitzer
"The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions… In Hinduism, men probe the mystery of God and express it with a rich fund of myths, and a penetrating philosophy… In the various forms of Buddhism the basic inadequacy of this changing world is recognized and men are taught with confident application how they can achieve a state of complete liberation… The Church also regards with esteem the Muslims who worship the one, subsistent, merciful and almighty God… They venerate Jesus as a prophet… Given the great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews, it is the wish of this sacred Council to foster and recommend a mutual knowledge and esteem." - Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
"As for the necessity of coining new names for God, it is incomprehensible that philosophy and civilization can be enriched by ceasing to think of God as Life, Truth, Beauty, and Love, and beginning to think of Him as a blind and whirling space-time configuration dancing dizzily in an Einstein universe, plunging forward along a path of which He is ignorant, toward a goal of which He knows nothing whatever." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"It is easier to write ten volumes of philosophy than to put one principle into practice." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"[Groupthink] is rationalized conformity – an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right as and good as well." - William H. Whyte, Jr., fully William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte
"A sense of “belonging,” a sense of meaningful association with others, has never required that one sacrifice his individuality as part of the bargain. Why, then, do so many rush to embrace a philosophy which tells them it is necessary." - William H. Whyte, Jr., fully William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte
"What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s too close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically." - Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
"Science is neither a philosophy nor a belief system. It is a combination of mental operations that has become increasingly the habit of educated peoples, a culture of illuminations hit upon by a fortunate turn of history that yielded the most effective way of learning about the real world ever conceived." -
"Why not let people differ about their answers to the great mysteries of the Universe? Let each seek one's own way to the highest, to one's own sense of supreme loyalty in life, one's ideal of life. Let each philosophy, each world-view bring forth its truth and beauty to a larger perspective, that people may grow in vision, stature and dedication." - Algernon D Black