This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living." - Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
"We have too many men of science, and too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets. We know more about war than we know of peace, more about killing than we know about living." - Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
"The Kingdom of Heaven cometh not by observation. It comes by the appreciation of the signs of the presence and power of God in our inner experience." - Edgar Sheffield Brightman
"It's said that 'power corrupts,' but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which they are insatiable, implacable." - David Brin
"Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for power equal to your tasks." - Phillips Brooks
"We may call it spirituality, enthusiasm, spontaneity, outlook, insight, - many names will do, - but what we mean by all of them is essentially the same. It is the power to see the element of eternal principles in which things live, - to see the way in which each fact and act is a true wave on the great ocean of infinity, to see all life full of the life of God, - and so to lose the sense of hardness and separateness in the things which happen and things we do." - Phillips Brooks
"Optimists perform better statistically. Optimism is power." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"The seven traits of successful people: passion, belief, strategy, clarity of values, energy, bonding power, and mastery of communication." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth’s vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species – acquired significant power to alter nature of his world." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
"The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
"When a just cause reaches its flood tide… whatever stands in the way must fall before its overwhelming power." - Carrie Chapman Catt
"It was for the sake of security that the people of ancient ties turned to the Baals and other idols. Today, our oppressors turn to money and military power and to the so-called security forces. But their security is insecurity. We experience their security as intimidation and repression, terror, rape and murder. Those who turn to the idols for security demand our insecurity as the price that must be paid." - Center of Concern NULL
"The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"Uncontrolled technology can certainly bring down disaster, perhaps irreparable, as our race. The only protection against it is a growth in man’s spiritual and moral maturity proportionate to his growth in technical skill and power." - W. Norris Clarke
"Courage is of two kinds: first, physical courage, or courage in the presence of danger to the person; and next, moral courage, or courage before responsibility, whether it be before the judgment seat of external authority, or of the inner power, the conscience." - Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz
"The arts of power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces [him]; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments." - Henry Clay
"Your subconscious mind produces in your daily life evidence of the thoughts you send back to it. The constant repetition of fear, anxiety and worry thoughts will bring upon you the same thing multiplied many times over, but the constant practice of positive thinking, making affirmations hour by hour that God is now healing your fears and worries, will bring magnificent results... You have the ability for successful living. You have the tools. The power you use is faith and the tools are your thoughts and ideas." - Albert E Cliffe
"The whole of evolution is, in reality, a process of self-realizing a moral purpose; the correlation of mind and brain is just the phenomenal aspect of the real correlation of our mind with the divine power which sustains us." - George Alonzo Coe
"Power always has most to [fear] from its own illusions." - James Fenimore Cooper
"Leave every church Independent; not Independent from brotherly Counsel, God forbid it that we should refuse that; but when it comes to power, that one Church shall have the power over the rest, then look for a Beast." - John Cotton
"Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, people’s love for truth, justice, freedom, and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail." -
"The danger of the cult of technological progress lies in its tendency to restrict and confine mankind within the adoring contemplation of his own creative power." - Jean Daniélou
"All species, all forms of life, have equal status before the presence of the universal power to which we are all subject. The religious requirement for all life-forms is thus harmony, and this requirement holds for every species, ours included… As long as the bond of life is respected, all species have value and meaning." - Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.
"Agnosticism denies to the human mind a power of attaining knowledge which it does possess... Agnosticism, as such, is a theory about knowledge and not about religion." - Richard Downey
"Physically man can never arrive at more than a partial view, or better still, his partial view of the phenomena; to this extent all scientific conclusions would appear to be subjective. Morally considered, the matter goes further… the truth at which the experimenter arrives will depend on the character of his experience and on the power of his perception which he brings to bear upon the phenomenon. What we `see’ of the world depends on what we are capable of seeing." - L. Francis Edmunds
"The unleased power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." - Albert Einstein
"Could it be that liberation, not knowledge, is the true end purpose of human life and even its meaning? And might this liberation be achieved through non-rational means: power, sexuality, revolution, resignation, creativity, compassion, or solidarity? If this predicament is not so much ignorance (of something) as bondage (to something), what must we be liberated from, and what are we therefore liberated for?" - Stephen A. Erickson
"Influence comes out of the work that you’ve done and the things you’ve stood for. Influence and power shouldn’t be given to just anybody who wants them." - Millicent Fenwick
"We have no definition of God; we have only a roadway that leads out toward God. We are convinced beyond peradventure that he who travels merely the path of electrons, atoms, molecules toward a vision of the ultimate misses it, and that he who travels the road of spiritual values – goodness, truth, beauty – finds it. The eternal and creative Power cannot be adequately approached through the metrical world alone; the innermost nature of the ultimate is revealed also in the personal world of spiritual values." -
"Faith is people’s evolved and evolving ways of experiencing self, others and world (as they construct them) as related to and affected by the ultimate conditions of existence (as they construct them) and of shaping their lives’ purposes and meaning, trusts and loyalties, in light of the character of being, value and power determining the ultimate conditions of existence (as grasped in their operative images – conscious and unconscious of them)." - James W. Fowler III
"Most often faith is understood as belief in certain propositional, doctrinal formulations that in some essential ands static way are supposed to “contain” truth. But if faith is relational, a pledging of trust and fidelity to another, and a way of moving into the force field of life trusting in dynamic center of value and power, then the “truth” of faith takes on a different quality. Truth is lived: it is a pattern of being in relation to others and to God. In this light, doctrines and creeds come to be seen as playing a different though still crucial role. Rather than being the repositories of truth, like treasure chests to be honored and assented to, they becomes guides for the construction of contemporary ways of seeing and being." - James W. Fowler III
"Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God." - Emmet Fox
"Your contact with God lies in recognizing your identity, the “I am.” The “I am” is everything you arrogate to yourself in thought. If you say, “I am sick,” you have ordered your own. If you say, “I am well, I am one with God,” you have ordered your own. God is universal - “I am what I am” - and you as an individual particularize it when you say, “I am.” When you use your “I am” in an inverted or negative sense, you are using it against yourself and will bring sickness, poverty, controversy, and fear into your life. When you particularize, or individualize, Divine Power by using “I am” constructively, then you will get health, prosperity, and abounding happiness, for you will have identified yourself with God - the gold mine within." - Emmet Fox
"If, as Heraclitus said, “A man’s character is his fate” – that is, if our fate is largely determined by the habitual tendencies of our repetition compulsion-personality – then the power of consciousness is that it allows us to change impulses, we have what Kierkegaard called “the possibility of possibility”: the possibility of having a free choice and the moral responsibility that comes with it. In that sense, the fear of consciousness is ultimately the fear of moral responsibility, because if we own our anxiety, shame, and guilt, and allow ourselves to have full consciousness of emotions that motivate our behavior, then we will inevitably recognize the full weight of our responsibility for that behavior." - Elio Frattaroli
"In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform everything into objects of their purchasing power; hence their strictly materialistic concept of existence. Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal… To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the “others,” of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion." - Paulo Freire
"The bare fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and cannot admit compromise or limitations that scientific research looks on the whole field of human activity as its own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards any other power that seeks to usurp any part of its province." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Freedom, the ability to preserve one’s integrity against power, is the basic condition for morality." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Once a doctrine, however irrational, has gained power in a society, millions of people will believe in it rather than feel ostracized and isolated." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Power on the one side, fear on the other, are always the buttresses on which irrational authority is built." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"The lust for power is not rooted in strength but in weakness." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"There is no meaning in life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his power, by living productively… Only constant vigilance, activity, and effort can keep us from failing in the one task that matters – the full development of our powers within the limitations set up by the laws of our existence." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"A nonviolent revolution is not a program of “seizure of power.” It is a program of transformation of relationships ending in a peaceful transfer of power." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu