This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Immense hidden powers seem to lurk in the unconscious depths of even the most common man - indeed, of all people without exception. It is these powers, when put under pressure, that are responsible for all great creative efforts. The men who make history are those who - consciously or unconsciously - turn the switch on the inner switchboards of human character. Pour out all your fears and anxieties, malicious joy and greed and hatred, and you will be astonished at the terrific amount of power which is pent up in your unconscious mind. We can release this power and transform it from negative into positive power, only by bringing into the open, into the light of consciousness, and by accepting ourselves as we are, even though the mountains of debts seem to crush us. This is the principle of honesty. And it is clear that it can be applied only if connected with the principle of faith.
Character | Consciousness | Faith | Greed | History | Honesty | Joy | Light | Man | Men | Mind | People | Power | Will |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Greed for enlightenment and immortality is no different than greed for material wealth.
Enlightenment | Greed | Immortality | Wealth |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I believe in immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings. I believe that the state we enter after death is wrought of our own motives, thoughts, and deeds... I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord.
Death | Deeds | Faith | Heart | Immortality | Joy | Life | Life | Light | Lord | Magic | Motives | Soul |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The great lie about immortality destroys every kind of reason, every kind of naturalness in the instincts.
Immortality | Reason |
I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
Authority | Ethics | Immortality | Individual |
Unethical behavior both stems from and reinforces destructive mental factors such as greed and anger. Conversely, ethical behavior undermines these and cultivates mental factors such as kindness, compassion, and calm. Ultimately, after transpersonal maturation occurs, ethical behavior is said to flow spontaneously as a natural expression of identification with all people and all life.
Anger | Behavior | Compassion | Greed | Kindness | Life | Life | People |
Children are voices of immortality to a man, though he be dead.
Children | Immortality | Man |
To realize self as universal is the equivalent of immortality - a timeless state. The empirical ego then ceases like a ripple on the ocean.
Ego | Immortality | Self |
Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
Science cannot supply a definite answer to this question. Immortality relates to an aspect of life which is not physical, that is which cannot be detected and measured by any instrument, and to which the application of the laws of science can at best be only a well-considered guess.
Immortality | Life | Life | Question | Science |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Human dignity… can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness.
Achievement | Compassion | Dignity | Ethics | Greed | Love |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Human dignity...can be achieved only in the field of ethics, and ethical achievement is measured by the degree in which our actions are governed by compassion and love, not by greed and aggressiveness.
Achievement | Compassion | Dignity | Ethics | Greed | Love |
It is partly to avoid consciousness of greed that we prefer to associate with those who are at least as greedy as we ourselves. Those who consume much less are a reproach.
Consciousness | Greed |
The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
Neither experience nor science has given man the idea of immortality… The ideal of immortality rises from the very depths of his soul - he feels, he sees, he knows that he is immortal.
Experience | Immortality | Man | Science | Soul |
Sentimental time is a genuine, if poetical, version of the march of existence, even as pictorial space is a genuine, if poetical version of its distribution... the least sentimental term in sentimental time is the term now, because it marks the junction of fancy with action... For it is evident that actual succession can contain nothing but nows, so that now in a certain way is immortal. But this immortality is only a continual reiteration, a series of moments each without self-possession and without assurance of any other moment; so that if ever the now loses its indicative practical force and becomes introspective, it becomes acutely sentimental, a perpetual hope unrealized and a perpetual dying.
Action | Existence | Force | Hope | Immortality | Nothing | Self | Space | Time |
No man is prosperous whose immortality is forfeited. No man is rich to whom the grave brings eternal bankruptcy. No man is happy upon whose path there rests but a momentary glimmer of light, shining out between clouds that are closing over him in darkness forever.
Darkness | Eternal | Grave | Happy | Immortality | Light | Man |