This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The most striking [way in which children respond to external influences] and one that is almost like a magic wand for opening the gate to the normal expression of a child’s natural gifts is activity concentrated on some task that requires movement of the hands guided by the intellect.
Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
Universal love… means that one makes no distinction between the state of others and one’s own; none between the houses of other and one’s own; none between the other person and oneself.
Distinction | Love | Means |
When mystical activity is at its height, we find consciousness possessed by the sense of being at once excessive and identical with the self: great enough to be God; interior enough to be me.
Most religions are absolutist. Claims to revelation militate against rational argument and compromise. In this sense all religions contain totalitarian possibilities; for totalitarianism, which welds the state into a single body “knit together as one man” is really the religious impulse, the worship of leadership and ideology, the cult of Person or Book, directed towards secular ends.
Argument | Body | Cult | Ends | Impulse | Man | Revelation | Sense | Worship | Leadership |
Man is but a short, critical stage between the animal and the spiritual. His state is one of constant wavering, of soaring and descending. Undeviating humanity is nonexistent. The emancipated man is yet to emerge.
A good man never dies - in worthy deed and prayer and helpful hands, and honest eyes, if smiles or tears be there; who lives for you and me - live for the world he tries to help - he lives eternally. A good man never dies. Who lives bravely take his share of toil and stress and, for his weaker fellows’ sake, makes every burden less - he may, at last, seem worn - lie fallen - hands and eyes folded - yet, though we mourn and mourn, a good man never dies.
Patricia Goldman-Rakic, born Patricia Shoer
The ultimate function of the neurons in the prefrontal cortex is to excite or inhibit activity in other parts of the brain.” In prohibition and shame we excite the most destructive systems and inhibit the creative ones.
Shame |
Temporality and uninterruptedness express the relation of existence to time, a passive relation. What distinguishes organic from inorganic existence is the fact that the plant or the animal stands in an active and defensive relation to temporality… Life, we know from biology, is not a passive state of indifference, and inertia. The essence of life is intense care and concern.
Care | Existence | Indifference | Life | Life | Organic | Time |
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
When we dispute over dogmas we are divided. But when we take to the religious life of prayer and contemplation, we are brought together. The deeper the prayers, the more is the individual lost in the apprehension of the Supreme.
Contemplation | Dispute | Individual | Life | Life | Prayer |
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
In business, the chief focus is on profitability. Government, by contrast, has no simple bottom line but rather a vast array of interests and priorities, many of which exist in a state of tension or conflict. For that reason, decision making in government is vastly more complex.
Business | Contrast | Decision | Focus | Government | Reason | Government |
N. Sri Ram, fully Nilakanta Sri Ram or Nilakantha Sri Ram
The state of love is a state of grace.
Luxury either comes of riches or makes them necessary; it corrupts at once rich and poor, the rich by possession and the poor by covetousness; it sells the country to softness and vanity, and takes away from the state all its citizens, to make them slaves one to another, and one and all to public opinion.
The adult works to perfect his environment, whereas the child works to perfect himself, using the environment as the means… The child is a being in a constant state of transformation.
There is no prayer so blessed as the prayer which asks for nothing.
John Sergieff of Cronstadt, aka Saint John of Kronstadt, born John Iliytch Sergieff
Prayer breathes hope, and prayer without hope is a sinful prayer.
B. F. Skinner, fully Burrhus Frederic "B.F." Skinner
There are no limits to perfection. The human species will never reach a final state of perfection before it is exterminated.
Perfection | Will |