This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle
If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you do – stop. Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness. And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.
Acceptance | Consciousness | Life | Life | Responsibility |
Religion is not necessary to give meaning to life, thought it is necessary to any claim that there is one state or being of supreme intrinsic value, and there is one overridingly important human purpose and that is an objective, morally ordered pattern.
Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Thought | Thought |
We live in a world where the unethical actions of a single CEO can leave hundreds, thousands and even millions of people in a state of complete economic devastation.
Opinions about the perfect state of human society are only that; no road to ethical truth exists to moderate between them.
As we have seen over and over again, whenever church and state enter into partnership, human freedom is restricted, intellectual growth is stifled, and education is formalized and routinized to exclude and smother innovation and creativity.
Church | Creativity | Education | Freedom | Growth | Innovation |
Daphne Du Maurier, fully Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning
Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind.
If humanity, or life in general, was created to serve a particular purpose beyond itself, our being would be analogous to a manufactured artifact. There seems to be little in this state of affairs to justify the exultation that religious people sometimes feel in thinking that God's plan reveals the purpose and the meaning of all reality.
God | Humanity | Justify | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | People | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Thinking |
The man who thinks he can: If you think you are beaten, you are, if you think you dare not, you don't. If you would like to win but you think you can't, it's almost certain you won't. If you think you'll lose, you've lost, For out in the world we find, success begins with a fellow's will. It's all in the state of mind. If you think you're outclassed, you are. You've got to think high to rise. You've got to be sure of yourself before you can ever win a prize. Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but soon or late, the man who wins is the man who thinks he can!
The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate.
Government | Government |
Anyone in a state of seeking can never be happy. Only those who are constantly finding are fulfilled. And finding is not something that happens to us - it is something we do.
Happy |
Alex Comfort, fully Alexander Comfort
In a state of war each sincere citizen feels responsibility to society in the abstract, and none to the people he kills.
Abstract | People | Responsibility | Society | War | Society |
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
We call "happiness" a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.
Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues.
Character | Good | Man | Merit | Mind | Praise | Respect | Understanding | Wisdom | Wise | Respect |
States require property, but property, even though living beings are included in it, is no part of a state; for a state is not a community of living beings only, but a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible. Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many; forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Good | Government | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Practice | Property | Qualities | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |