This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
Evolution needs synthesis, the ecological perspective, and the holistic outlook so that life continues to be possible. That change from the old viewpoint, dividing up the world into smaller parts, towards a holistic attitude is biologically conditioned.
Deep ecology is supported by modern science... but it is rooted in a perception of reality that goes beyond the scientific framework to an intuitive awareness of the oneness of all life, the interdependence of its multiple manifestations and its cycles of change and transformation. When the concept of the human spirit is understood in this sense, as the mode of consciousness in which the individual feels connected to the cosmos as a whole, it becomes clear that ecological awareness is truly spiritual.
Awareness | Change | Consciousness | Individual | Life | Life | Oneness | Perception | Reality | Science | Sense | Spirit | Awareness |
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
What we need... is a new “paradigm” - a new vision of reality; a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values. The beginnings of this change, of the shift from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, are already visible in all fields and are likely to dominate the present decade.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
Absolute | Change | Experience | Improvement | Infancy | Past | Progress |
Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.
To change and to change for the better are two different things.
Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their centre.
Change | Experience | Imagination | Opportunity | Will |
All things much change to something new, to something strange.
Change |
Hermann Keyserling, fully Hermann Alexander Graf Keyserling
No radical change on the plane of history is possible without crime.
Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
One may derive information from the regimen of persons in good health what things are proper; for if it appear that there is a great difference whether the diet be so and so, in other respects, but more especially in the changes, how can it be otherwise in diseases, and more especially in the acute? But it is well ascertained that even a faulty diet of food and drink steadily persevered in, is safer in the main as regards health than if one suddenly change to another.
The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.
Change a virtue in its circumstances and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.
Change | Circumstances | Fault | Man | Merit | Regard | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.
Change |
In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished.
In many spiritual traditions there is only one important question to answer, and that question is: Who am I? When we begin to answer it, we are filled with images and ideals – the negative images of ourselves that we wish to change and perfect and the positive images of some great spiritual potential – yet the path is not so much about changing ourselves as it is about listening to the fundamentals of our being.