This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be. The tendency to forget this vital question is the tragic disease of contemporary man, a disease that might prove fatal, that may end in disaster. The pray is to recollect passionately the perpetual urgency of this vital question.
Our community is in spiritual distress, and some of our organizations are often too concerned with digits. Our disease is a loss of character and commitment, and the cure of our plight cannot be derived from charts and diagrams.
Happiness is an endowment and not an acquisition. It depends more upon temperament and disposition than environment.
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
Avarice | Disease | Life | Life | Little | Love of money | Love | Means | Money | Necessity | Position | Principles | Qualities | Time | Wealth | Will |
Junius, psyeudonym of unknown English Political Writer NULL
The vices operate like age, bring on disease before its time and in the prime of youth, leave the character broken and exhausted.
Kate Millet, Katherine Murray Millett
The entire construct of the "medical model" of "mental illness"What is it but an analogy? Between physical medicine and psychiatry: the mind is said to be subject to disease in the same manner as the body. But whereas in physical medicine there are verifiable physiological proofs—in damaged or affected tissue, bacteria, inflammation, cellular irregularity—in mental illness alleged socially unacceptable behavior is taken as a symptom, even as proof, of pathology.
Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
Six Declines of Modern Youth: Decline of Fitness due to modern methods of locomotion [moving about];Decline of Initiative and Enterprise due to the widespread disease of spectatoritis; Decline of Memory and Imagination due to the confused restlessness of modern life; Decline of Skill and Care due to the weakened tradition of craftsmanship; Decline of Self-discipline due to the ever-present availability of stimulants and tranquilizers; And worst of all: Decline of Compassion due to the unseemly haste with which modern life is conducted or as William Temple called "spiritual death".
Care | Compassion | Disease | Haste | Imagination | Initiative | Life | Life | Memory | Restlessness | Skill | Tradition |
Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan
Whether our task is fighting poverty, stemming the spread of disease or saving innocent lives from mass murder, we have seen that we cannot succeed without the leadership of the strong and the engagement of all
Disease | Fighting | Engagement | Leadership |
The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
We know a great deal more about the causes of physical disease than we do about the causes of physical health.
Disease |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
The physician should not treat the disease but the patient who is suffering from it.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
No disease that can be treated by diet should be treated with any other means.
Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.
Age | Disease | Strength | Trials | Vicissitudes |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
The soul is subject to health and disease, just as is the body. The health and disease of both... undoubtedly depend upon beliefs and customs, which are peculiar to mankind.
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.
I contracted a disease which I have never shaken off. The disease was idealism. Because of it, I did the thing in life I wanted to do - Writing.