This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The effects of treating the planet in ways that ignore our inherent inseparability were never more evident. And from the perspective of a consciousness shared by all living beings, the peoples of the Earth are not isolated individuals.
Consciousness | Earth |
Happiness... must be some form of contemplation. But, being a man, one will also need external prosperity; for our nature is not self-sufficient for the purpose of contemplation, but our body also must be healthy and must have food and other attention. Still, we must not think that the man who is to be happy will need many things or great things... for self-sufficiency and action do not involve excess, and we do noble acts without ruling earth and sea.
Action | Attention | Body | Contemplation | Earth | Excess | Happy | Man | Nature | Need | Prosperity | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Self-sufficiency | Will | Think |
Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Man has been endowed with reason and creative powers to increase what has been given him, but so far he has not created but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, the rivers are drying up, the game birds are becoming extinct, the climate is ruined, and every day the earth is becoming poorer and more hideous.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The aim, and test, of progress under a truly Christian dispensation on Earth would not lie in the field of mundane social life; the field would be the spiritual life of individual souls in their passage through this earthly life from birth into this world to death out of it.
Birth | Death | Earth | Individual | Life | Life | Progress | World |
What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent!
Earth | Imagination | Reputation | Respect | Riches | Riches | Respect |
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
Circumstances | Counsel | Earth | Enough | Giving | Good | Man | Mind | Need | Noise | Wonder |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Death | Earth | Fear | Glory | Habit | Hell | Light | Looks | Man | Men | Nothing | Thought | World | Thought |
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.