This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. There need be no unqualified evils. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.
Law | Learning | Lesson | Misfortune | Need | Time | Tragedy |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Is there really as much difference as we think between the Aztec human sacrifices to their gods and the modern human sacrifices in war to the idols of nationalism and the sovereign state?
W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population.
Absolute | Cause | Future | Loyalty | Loyalty | Religion | War | Will |
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.
Learning is not the mere acquisition of knowledge and more knowledge. Learning is a process of making quantum leaps beyond the subjective self.
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate.
Better | Consciousness | Ego | Evolution | Experience | Extreme | Hate | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Peace | People | Progress | Society | Truth | War | Society | Learn |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The common element of most fears is that they are based on the illusion that happiness is dependent on externals and therefore vulnerable… Cessation of fear is the result of learning that the source of happiness and joy is from within. It stems from recognizing that its source is the joy of one’s own existence, which is continuous and not dependent on externals. This results from surrendering expectations and demands on one’s self, the world, and others. The thought “I can only be happy if I win or get what I want” is a guarantee of worry, anxiety, and unhappiness.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Existence | Fear | Guarantee | Happy | Illusion | Joy | Learning | Self | Thought | Unhappiness | World | Worry | Happiness | Thought |
Kenneth Hanson, aka Ken Hanson
To study is to live… The discipline of learning provides cohesion, a clear and compelling reason for being.
Discipline | Learning | Reason | Study |
Prayer… is… a technique for contacting and learning to know Reality… the exploration of Reality by exploring the Beyond, which is within.
It is not learning but doing that is the most important thing.
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The doctrine of original sin is a theological perversion of natural fact. It is a fact that all human beings begin life with an equipment of instincts, impulses, and desires, at war with one another and often out of harmony with the realities of eth physical, social, and spiritual world. Sin and the sense of sin will always be with us, to torture and weigh down; but… the religion of the future will try to prevent men’s being afflicted with the sense of sin, rather than encourage it, and then attempt to cure it.
Doctrine | Future | Harmony | Life | Life | Men | Religion | Sense | Sin | Torture | War | Will | World |
Learning, then controlling, is limited by only two things: by our mind’s capabilities and the constraints of the universe. Learning how to progressively exploit our environment will not stop until life itself ceases… life explores and exploits its inherited options.
An individual does not comprehend his or her self as a linear sequence – a succession of roles or a trajectory of “socialize” beings, learning and then acting out (or deviating from) a set of socially appropriate rules of behavior. Moreover, identity in old age is not merely the sum of the parts, whether roles, achievements, losses, or social norms. Instead, people dynamically integrate a wide range of experience – unique situations, structural forces, values, cultural pathways, knowledge of an entire life span – to construct a current and viable identity.
Age | Behavior | Experience | Individual | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | People | Self | Unique | Old |