This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. The existence of God is like a geometrical axiom. It may be beyond our heart grasp. I shall not talk of an intellectual grasp. Intellectual attempts are more or less failures, as a rational explanation cannot give you the faith in a living God. For it is a thing beyond the grasp of reason. It transcends reason. There are numerous phenomena from which you can reason out the existence of God, but I shall not insult your intelligence by offering you a rational explanation of that type. I would have you brush aside all rational explanations and begin with a simple childlike faith in God. If I exist, God exists. With me it is a necessity of my being as it is with millions. They may not be able to talk about it, but from their life you can see that it is a part of their life. I am only asking you to restore the belief that has been undermined. In order to do so, you have to unlearn a lot of literature that dazzles your intelligence and throws you off your feet. Start with the faith which is also a token of humility and an admission that we know nothing, that we are less than atoms in this universe. We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
Argument | Belief | Existence | Faith | God | Heart | Humility | Ignorance | Insult | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Literature | Necessity | Order | Phenomena | Power | Reason | Self | Insult | God |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself.
Nature | Question | Respect | Thinking | Will | Work | Respect | Trouble | Teacher |
There are many doors to goodness. (Saying) ‘glory to God,’ ‘praise be to God,’ ‘there is no deity but God,’ enjoining good, forbidding evil, removing harm from the road, listening to the deaf (until you understand them), leading the blind, guiding one to the object of his need, hurrying with the strength of one’s legs to one in sorrow who is asking for help, and supporting the weak with the strength of one’s arms – all of these are (forms of) charity prescribed for you.
Charity | Harm | Listening | Object | Sorrow | Strength | Understand |
Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner
In an attempt to instill students with these qualities and behaviors, a teacher adhering to the inquiry method in pedagogy must behave very differently from a traditional teacher. Postman and Weingartner suggest that inquiry teachers have the following characteristics : They avoid telling students what they "ought to know". They talk to students mostly by questioning, and especially by asking divergent questions. They do not accept short, simple answers to questions. They encourage students to interact directly with one another, and avoid judging what is said in student interactions. They do not summarize students' discussion. They do not plan the exact direction of their lessons in advance, and allow it to develop in response to students' interests. Their lessons pose problems to students. They gauge their success by change in students' inquiry behaviors (with the above characteristics of "good learners" as a goal).
Change | Inquiry | Method | Plan | Problems | Qualities | Success | Following | Teacher |
Nikki Giovanni, fully Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni
There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your live those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.
Comfort | Despair | Love | People | World | Happiness | Think |
Oswald Hoffmann, fully Oswald C. J. Hoffmann
The [Good Samaritan] never asked: "Is this man my neighbor?" He didn't waste time asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking himself, "Is the wounded man the kind I should help?" he just saw the man's problem and did something about it.
P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
Prayer is not mere wishing. It is asking – with a will. . . . It is energy. We turn to an active Giver; therefore we go into action.
Pamela Oliver and Gerald Maxwell
We do not want in any way to imply that professionalized mobilization has replaced "spontaneous" grassroots mobilization. Our arguments have made it clear that we do not think professionalized mobilizations generally can create grassroots mobilizations of volunteers, because mobilizing money is generally inconsistent with mobilizing action. But we also think that the processes through which new actions emerge are still in place and operating, although we seem to be in a "quiet" period. It is nevertheless worth asking whether these professionalized organizations will prove to be irrelevant to grassroots mobilization, supportive of it, or competitive with it
In order to really understand, we need to listen, not reply. We need to listen long and attentively. In order to help anybody to open his heart we have to give him time, asking only a few questions, as carefully as possible in order to help him better explain his experience.
Each human being is unique, each with their own qualities, instincts, forms of pleasure, and desire for adventure. However, society always imposes on us a collective ways of behaving, and people never stop to wonder why they should behave like that. They just accept it the way typists accepted the fact that the QWERTY keyboard was the best possible one. Have you ever met anyone is your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not the other?... Each of us carries within it something unknown. But, when it floats to the surface, be capable of miracles... Each of us is unique, has special qualities, and his instincts, and the kinds of pleasure to enjoy, and a desire to run adventures. Is that society imposes on us always in the way of collective behavior, does not stop people asking them to behave in this way.
Desire | Life | Life | People | Pleasure | Society | Wonder | Society |
Thousands of years ago, weren't we capable of building enormous structures like the pyramids? Weren't we capable of worshiping gods, weaving, making fire, finding lovers and wives, sending written messages? Of course we were. But although we've succeeded in replacing slaves with wage slaves, all the advances we've made have been in the field of science. Human beings are still asking the same questions as their ancestors. In short, they haven't evolved at all.
After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony… All life battles teach us something, even those we lose… All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly… ‘Yes, you have been through all this before,’ replies his heart. ‘But you have never been beyond it… All people know exactly how we should live our lives and never have any idea how to live their own lives… Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.
Ecstasy | Freedom | Life | Life | Love | People | Right | Teach | Thought | Time | Thought |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions.
Wrong |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.
Wrong |
Animal Liberation has a lot of handicaps. First and most obvious is the fact that members of the exploited group cannot themselves make an organized protest against the treatment they receive (though they can and do protest to the best of their abilities individually). We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves. You can appreciate how serious this handicap is by asking yourself how long blacks would have had to wait for equal rights if they had not been able to stand up for themselves and demand it. The less able a group is to stand up and organize against oppression, the more easily it is oppressed.
Under the conditions of modern life we have more control over our thoughts, and in connection with this there is a special method by which we may work on the development of our consciousness using that instrument which is most obedient to our will; that is, our mind, or the intellectual center. In order to understand more clearly what I am going to say, you must try to remember that we have no control over our consciousness. When I said that we can become more conscious, or that a man can be made conscious for a moment simply by asking him if he is conscious or not, I used the words 'conscious' or 'consciousness' in a relative sense. There are so many degrees of consciousness and every higher degree means 'consciousness' in relation to a lower degree. But, if we have no control over consciousness itself, we have a certain control over our thinking about consciousness, and we can construct our thinking in such a way as to bring consciousness. What I mean is that by giving to our thoughts the direction which they would have in a moment of consciousness, we can, in this way, induce consciousness.
Consciousness | Control | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Means | Method | Order | Thinking | Words | Work | Understand |
To protest about bullfighting in Spain, the eating of dogs in South Korea, or the slaughter of baby seals in Canada, while continuing to eat eggs from hens who have spent their lives crammed into cages, or veal from calves who have been deprived of their mothers, their proper diet, and the freedom to lie down with their legs extended, is like denouncing apartheid in South Africa while asking your neighbors not to sell their houses to blacks.
Pinchas Shapiro of Koretz, aka Pinchas or Pinchos of Koretz
Usually, persons asking for advice have already solved their own problem without knowing it.
Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests.
Change | Enthusiasm |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.
Behavior | Brotherhood | Children | Forgiveness | History | People | Forgiveness |