This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
It is evident, on the basis of our considerations, that this appearance of success cannot in the least be regarded as a sign of truth and correspondence with nature. Quite the contrary, suspicion arises that the absence of major difficulties is a result of the decrease of empirical content brought about by the elimination of alternatives, and of facts that can be discovered with their help. In other words, the suspicion arises that this alleged success is due to the fact that the theory, when extended beyond its starting point, was turned into rigid ideology. Such Ideology is "successful" not because it agrees so well with the facts; it is successful because no facts have been specified that could constitute a test, and because some such facts have been removed. Its "success" is entirely man-made. It was decided to stick to some ideas, come what may, and the result was, quite naturally, the survival of these ideas. If now the initial decision is forgotten, or made only implicitly, for example, if it becomes common law in physics, then the survival itself will seem to constitute independent support., it will reinforce the decision, or turn it into an explicate one, and in this way close the circle. This is how empirical "evidence" may be created by a procedure which quotes as its justification the very same evidence it has produced.
Absence | Appearance | Decision | Evidence | Justification | Law | Success | Survival | Suspicion | Truth | Will |
Because the restorative economy inverts ingrained beliefs about how business functions, it may precipitate unusual changes in the economy...the restorative economy will be one in which some businesses get smaller but hire more people, where money can be made by selling the absence of a product or sevice, as is the case where public utilities sell efficiency rather than additional power, and where profits increase when productivity is lowered. Corporations can compete to conserve and increase resources rather than deplete them. Complex and onerous regulations will be replaced by motivating standards." (This is exactly the situation where we are now at with R2000 and masonry heaters. We have the option of adopting an enlightened approach to change, favouring collaborative efforts to redesign codes and standards for everyone's benefit).
Absence | Business | Efficiency | Money | Public | Will | Business |
An awareness of death encourages us to live more intensely… And one has to understand that being brave is not the absence of fear but rather the strength to keep on going forward despite the fear. Death frees from the fear of dying… Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning.
Absence | Awareness | Death | Fear | Life | Life | Strength | Awareness | Understand |
Free again, but it's just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit yourself to what is best for you… Freedom continues to be the thing I prize most in the world. Of course, this has led me to drink wines I did not like, to do things I should not have done and which I will not do again; it has left scars on my body and on my soul, it has meant hurting certain people, although I have since asked their forgiveness, when I realized that I could do absolutely anything except force another person to follow me in my madness, in my lust for life. I don’t regret the painful times; I bear my scars like medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed by tears… Freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed with tears… Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me… Absolute freedom does not exist: there is only the freedom to choose something from that moment onwards to feel bound by its own decision.
Ability | Absence | Absolute | Body | Force | Freedom | Lust | Pleasure | Regret | Smile | Will |
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
In the presence of greatness, pettiness disappears. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.
Absence |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
The prison population consists of heterogeneous elements; but, taking only those who are usually described as 'the criminals' proper, and of whom we have heard so much lately from Lombroso and his followers, what struck me most as regards them was that the prisons, which are considered as preventive of anti-social deeds, are exactly the institutions for breeding them. Everyone knows that absence of education, dislike of regular work, physical incapability of sustained effort, misdirected love of adventure, gambling propensities, absence of energy, an untrained will, and carelessness about the happiness of others are the causes which bring this class of people before the courts. Now I was deeply impressed during my imprisonment by the fact that it is exactly these defects of human nature--each one of them--which the prison breeds in its inmates; and it is bound to breed them because it is a prison, and will breed them so long as it exists.
Absence | Defects | Love | People | Prison | Will | Happiness |
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
It is not the absence of defensiveness that characterizes learning teams but the way defensiveness is faced.
In existing criminology there are concepts: a criminal man, a criminal profession, a criminal society, a criminal sect, and a criminal tribe, but there is no concept of a criminal state, or a criminal government, or criminal legislation. Consequently, the biggest crimes actually escape being called crimes. This limitation of the field of vision of criminology together with the absence of an exact and permanent definition of the concept of crime is one of the chief characteristics of our culture.
Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley
A truly free society must not include a "peace" which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace.is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.
Absence | Freedom | Injustice | Injustice | Peace | People | Society | Suppression | Society | Learn |
There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.
Before entering upon the subject-matter of these new memoirs, I must explain an hypothesis which will undoubtedly seem strange, but in the absence of which it is impossible for me to proceed intelligibly: I mean the hypothesis of a God.
Absence | Hypothesis | Will |
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
There are many prophecies and several beliefs concerning world RELIGION, but what is most needed is to understand what religion means. The present religion, the coming religion, or the past religion, is for those who divide the truth, which is one, in to many... It is something living in the soul, in the mind, and in the heart of a man- it is absence keeps man as dead, and its presence gives him life. If there is any religion, it is this.
Absence | Heart | Man | Past | Present | Religion | World | Understand |
Wherefore also these Kinds [elements] occupied different places even before the universe was organized and generated out of them. Before that time, in truth, all these were in a state devoid of reason or measure, but when the work of setting in order this Universe was being undertaken, fire and water and earth and air, although possessing some traces of their known nature, were yet disposed as everything is likely to be in the absence of God; and inasmuch as this was then their natural condition, God began by first marking them out into shapes by means of forms and numbers.
Absence | Earth | God | Means | Order | Reason | Universe | Work | God |
What I, in my heart, believe of Whitman is, that he takes up the thread where Christ left it; that he inaugurates, in his own person, a new phase of religion; a religion which casts out utterly the abjectness of fear; sees the ‘nimbus round every head,’ knowing that evil, like its prototype darkness, is not a thing, an existence at all but the absence of a thing—of light; of balanced and proportionate development—activities not having found their right outlet—or not yet subordinated by the higher ones that will by and by unfold—impulses that have not yet opened their eyes to the beautiful daylight provided for them, but work in a kind of darkness as before birth, the soul remaining so much longer an embryo than the body—how often even when the hair is grey! So then is laid to rest the phantom of a Devil—of some ‘power or being contending against God.’
Absence | Darkness | Existence | Knowing | Religion | Rest | Right | Soul | Will | Work |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
The absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.
God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.
There is a fundamental paradox here. The less we are attached to life, the more alive we can become. The less we have preferences about life, the more deeply we can experience and participate in life. This is not to say that I don't prefer raisin toast to blueberry muffins. It is to say that I don't prefer raisin toast so much that I am unwilling to get out of bed unless I can have raisin toast, or that the absence of raisin toast ruins the whole day. Embracing life may be more about tasting than it is about either raisin toast or blueberry muffins. More about trusting one's ability to take joy in the newness of the day and what it may bring. More about adventure than having your own way.
Ability | Absence | Adventure | Day | Experience | Joy | Life | Life | Paradox |
In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.
Absence | Body | Day | Death | Life | Life | Little | Men | Mind |