This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What knowledge is there of which man is capable that is not founded on the exterior, the relation that exists between visible and invisible, the perceptible and imperceptible?
Wisdom comes into being only when there is an understanding of knowledge and the freedom from the known... When there is freedom from the known then relationship changes totally.
Freedom | Knowledge | Relationship | Understanding | Wisdom |
J. Z. Knight, fully Judy Zebra Knight, born Judity Darlene Hampton
Mere survival has always been the surface, bottom-line surface for our existence... Survival alone does not ennoble us... True meaning... can be found in what we’ve yet to accomplish, in the realm of the unknown. We must resolve to look deep within, at the unrealized potential of our unevolved selves. Materially, the unknown is one vast nothingness; potentially, it is all things. The unknown within us is where all dreams, thoughts and genius are frozen. The act of searching to make known the unknown triggers the brain. It allows us to incorporate, in ourselves, a greater consciousness, lighting the way for our dreams to enact themselves. Although we seem small in comparison with the whole universe, we are equipped with the greatest cosmic hookup ever created: the human brain. The brain - linked unconsciously to the infinite mind where the unknown resides - only facilitates thoughts, it does not create it. In struggling to find the answer to why we exist, we awaken the infinite mind to the unknown, making known the unknown, bringing meaning to our existence and commonness to all.
Consciousness | Dreams | Existence | Genius | Meaning | Mind | Survival | Universe | Wisdom |
Be avaricious of time; do not give any moment without receiving it in value; only allow hours to go from you with as much regret as you give to your gold; do not allow a single day to pass without increasing the treasure of your knowledge and virtue.
Day | Gold | Knowledge | Regret | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
Laberius, full name Decimus Laberius NULL
A small sum makes a debtor, a larger sum an enemy.
Experience: in that all our knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself. Our observation employed either about external or sensible objects or about the internal operations of our minds, perceived and reflected on by ourselves, is that which supplies our understandings with all the materials of thinking.
Experience | Knowledge | Observation | Thinking | Wisdom |
This divination of the spiritual in the things of sense, and which expresses itself I the things of sense, is precisely what we call Poetry. Metaphysics too pursues a spiritual prey, but in a very different formal object. Whereas metaphysics stands in the line of knowledge and of the contemplation of truth, poetry stands in the line of making and of the delight procured by beauty. The difference is an all-important one, and one that it would be harmful to disregard. Metaphysics snatches at the spiritual in an idea, by the most abstract intellection; poetry reaches it in the flesh, by the very point of the sense sharpened through intelligence... Metaphysics gives chase to essences and definitions, poetry to any flash of existence glittering by the way, and any reflection of an invisible order. Metaphysics isolates mystery in order to know it; poetry, thanks to the balances it constructs, handles and utilizes mystery as an unknown force.
Abstract | Beauty | Contemplation | Existence | Force | Important | Intelligence | Knowledge | Metaphysics | Mystery | Object | Order | Poetry | Reflection | Sense | Truth | Wisdom | Contemplation |
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Absolute | Authority | Family | Insecurity | Land | Life | Life | Luxury | Necessity | Novelty | Society | System | Tradition | Wisdom | Society | Novelty |
Solitary reading will enable a man to stuff himself with information, but without conversation, his mind will become like a pond without an outlet - a mass of unhealthy stagnature. It is not enough to harvest knowledge by study; the wind of talk must winnow it, and blow away the chaff; then will the clear, bright grains of wisdom be garnered, for our own use or that of others.
Conversation | Enough | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Reading | Study | Will | Wisdom |
It is an established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, stamped, as it were, upon the mind of man which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only show how many men obtain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any such innate impressions... Let us suppose the mind to be a blank tablet; how comes it to be furnished? To this answer in one word, from experience.
Experience | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Opinion | Principles | Soul | Understanding | Wisdom | World |
Proverbs are in the world of thought what gold coin is in the world of business - great value in small compass, and equally current among all people. Sometimes the proverb may be false, the coin counterfeit, but in both cases the false proves the value of the true.
Business | Gold | People | Proverbs | Thought | Wisdom | World | Business | Thought | Value |
There is but one bond of peace that is both permanent and enriching: the increasing knowledge of the world in which experiment occurs.
Experiment | Knowledge | Peace | Wisdom | World |
No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.
Experience | Knowledge | Man | Wisdom |