This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
What we have today, in modern industrial society, is not romantic and certainly not utopianÂ…But it is in very deep trouble and holds no promise of survival. We jolly well have to have the courage to dream if we want to survive and give our children a chance of survival.
Education | Metaphysics | Present | Soul | World | Understand |
Erwin Rommel, fully Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel
Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Although we are in possession of all requisite knowledge, it still requires a systematic, creative effort to bring this technology into active existence and make it generally visible and available. It is my experience that it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.
Present |
Music must naturally have been criticized in proportion as it improved, especially if its progress was considerable and subitaneous: for then it differs most from the sounds to which our ear is accustomed. But if we begin to be used to it, then it pleases, and it is prejudice any longer to oppose it.
Circumstances | Order | Power | Present |
The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection.
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
For de small stealing dey puts you in jail, soon or late. But for de big stealing dey puts yo' picture in de paper and yo' statue in de Hall of Fame when you croaks! If dey's one thing I learned in ten years, listenin' to de white quality on de Pullman cars, it's dat same fact. And when I gets a chance to use it -- from stowaway to Emperor in two years. Dat's goin' some!
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
TYRONE: [Stares at him -- impressed.] Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. [Then protesting uneasily] But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND: [Sardonically] The makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.
This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.
Aims | Art | Awareness | Experience | Individual | Meaning | Means | Mind | Nothing | Power | Practice | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Work | Art | Awareness |
If we define the nature of our lives by the mistake of the moment or the defeat of the hour or the boredom of the day, we will define it wrongly. We need roots in the past to give obedience ballast and breadth; we need a vision of the future to give obedience direction and goal. There must be an organic unity between past and future lived in the present.
Experience | Feelings | Heart | Little | Need | Past | People | Will | Work | Value |
Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.
Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
For a moment I lost myself, actually lost my life. I was set free! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life . . . to life itself. I caught a glimpse of something greater than myself.
Beauty | Dawn | Freedom | Fulfillment | Good | Joy | Life | Life | Lying | Past | Peace | Sound | Unity | Vision | Beauty | Old |
It is easy to distinguish two ideas absolutely simple; but in proportion as they become more complex, the difficulties increase. Then as our notions resemble each other in more respects, there is reason to fear lest we take many of them for one only, or at least that we do not distinguish them as much as we might. This frequently happens in. metaphysics and morals. The subject which we have actually in hand, is a very sensible proof of the difficulties that are to be surmounted. On these occasions we cannot be too cautious in pointing out even the minutest differences.
Imagination | Present |
With regard to natural cries, this man shall form them, as soon as he feels the passions to which they belong. However they will not be signs in respect to him the first time; because instead of reviving .his perceptions, they will as yet be no more than consequences of those perceptions.