This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy.
Art | Distinguish | Force | Future | Guidance | Important | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Problems | Religion | Thought | Will | Guidance | Art | Thought |
We find it easy to ignore the inner voice of the soul in our pursuit of external happiness… because we are driven by our own materialistic passions and by our addictive need for quick, painless fixes for anything disturbing in our lives.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
One instance of the innate and ineradicable inequality of men is their tendency to fall into two classes of leaders and followers. The latter constitute the vast majority; they stand in need of an authority which will make decisions for them and to which they for the most part offer an unqualified submission. This suggests that more care should be taken than hitherto to educate an upper stratum of men with independent minds, not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth, whose business it would be to give direction to the dependent masses.
Authority | Business | Care | Inequality | Intimidation | Majority | Men | Need | Submission | Truth | Will | Business |
In their unrestrained eagerness to possess, the oppressors develop the conviction that it is possible for them to transform everything into objects of their purchasing power; hence their strictly materialistic concept of existence. Money is the measure of all things, and profit the primary goal… To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the “others,” of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion.
Consciousness | Existence | Humanity | Money | People | Power |
Joyce Grenfell, fully Joyce Irene Grenfell née Phipps
There is no such thing as the pursuit of happiness, but there is the discovery of joy.
Our pursuit of knowledge involves exploring the consequences of our initial assumptions, both our conceptual assumptions and empirical ones
Kenneth Kaunda, fully Kenneth David Kaunda
Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies) – just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden for the rest.
Susanne Langer, fully Susanne Katherina Langer née Knauth
The continual pursuit of meanings – wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings – is philosophy.
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.
Absence | Balance | Day | God | Justice | Men | Order | Peace | War |
In the pursuit of a Truth, a person should discriminate between good and pleasant. He who chooses good attains happiness. He who prefers the pleasant, misses the goal.
There is a difference between happiness and enjoyment. Happiness is the result of pursuing a goal. Pursuit of the goal generates an energizing sense of purpose. Enjoyment, on the other hand, is an immediate sensation of pleasure; a person can enjoy a piece of cake, a piece of art, a good joke – it gives pleasure but then passes.
Art | Enjoyment | Good | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Happiness |
How could sufferings be relieved through purification? To know the Path is to get lost at the ford. Indeed, sickness comes from worldly love and poverty begins with the pursuit of greed.
Unlike Easterners, who are given to meditation, or Westerners, who have an inquisitive turn of mind, we of Africa, belonging neither to the East nor the West, are fundamentally observers, relying more on intuition than on the process of reasoning ... With us, life has always meant the pursuit of Happiness rather than the pursuit of Beauty or Truth.
Beauty | Intuition | Life | Life | Meditation | Mind | Truth | Beauty | Happiness |
Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Justice | Moderation | Virtue | Virtue |
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Defense | Justice | Liberty | Moderation | Virtue | Virtue | Moderation |