This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Enough | Imagination | Important | Knowledge | World |
It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good. Otherwise, he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.
Enough | Good | Individual | Knowledge | Man | Men | Motives | Order | Personality | Relationship | Sense | Teach | Understanding | Learn | Understand |
Man only knows that there exists something more in the things than perception gives because this other element lives in his inner being. Thus world knowledge and self-knowledge are inseparable.
Knowledge | Man | Perception | Self | Self-knowledge | World |
Eric D’Arcy, fully Joseph Eric D'Arcy
A person who holds for the moral authority of conscience will also hold for the individual’s freedom to follow his conscience without interference from the State.
Authority | Conscience | Freedom | Individual | Will |
Most people return small Favors, acknowledge middling ones, and repay great ones with Ingratitude.
Ingratitude | People |
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 respect due the authority carries with it the taboo on questioning it.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
It is knowledge that ultimately gives salvation.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Wisdom is knowledge plus: knowledge – and the knowledge of its own limits.
Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
Don't be afraid to take one large step because you can't cross a chasm in two small leaps.
Afraid |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
In mysticism… the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room – and no need – for knowledge about God.
Experience | God | Knowledge | Mysticism | Need | Thought | God |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
In our effort to escape from aloneness and powerlessness, we are ready to get rid of our individual self either by submission to new forms of authority or by a compulsive conforming to accepted patterns.
Authority | Effort | Individual | Self | Submission |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple… It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum total of that life is God. Hence the necessity of realizing God living within every one of us… The instrument of this knowledge is boundless, selfless service.
God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Necessity | Purpose | Purpose | Service | God | Learn |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
One instance of the innate and ineradicable inequality of men is their tendency to fall into two classes of leaders and followers. The latter constitute the vast majority; they stand in need of an authority which will make decisions for them and to which they for the most part offer an unqualified submission. This suggests that more care should be taken than hitherto to educate an upper stratum of men with independent minds, not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth, whose business it would be to give direction to the dependent masses.
Authority | Business | Care | Inequality | Intimidation | Majority | Men | Need | Submission | Truth | Will | Business |