This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If our religion is not true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to change it; if it is true, we are bound to propagate it
Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
Every petrified religion is like a blasphemy.
Holy, humble, penitent, believing, earnest, persevering prayer is never lost; it always prevails to the accomplishment of the thing sought, or that with which the suppliant will be better satisfied in the end, according to the superior wisdom of his heavenly father, in which he trusts.
Mythology is what grown-ups believe, folklore is what they tell the children, and religion is both.
It is a consoling fact that, in the end, the moral independence of mankind remains indestructible. Never has it been possible for a dictatorship to enforce one religion or one philosophy upon the whole world. Nor will it ever be possible, for the spirit always escapes from servitude; refuses to think in accordance with prescribed forms, to become shallow and supine at the word of command, to allow uniformity to be permanently imposed upon it.
Mankind | Philosophy | Religion | Servitude | Spirit | Uniformity | Will | Wisdom | World | Think |
The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order.
Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |
I have meditated on the different religions, endeavoring to understand them, and I have found that they stem from a single principle with numerous ramifications. Do not therefore ask a man to adopt a particular religion (rather than another), for this would separate him from the fundamental principle. It is this principle itself which must come to seek him.
Man | Religion | Understand |
Peter A. Bertocci, fully Peter Anthony Bertocci
In all real prayer there are two persons interacting with each other: God and the finite mind. The individual is meeting the conditions for finding God, and God is finding the opportunity to enter into a kind of relationship with the individual otherwise not possible. For in prayer at its best both God and man meet, both to foster the creation of new values in and through each other and to enjoy mutual fellowship for its own sake.
God | Individual | Man | Mind | Opportunity | Prayer | Relationship | God |
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
It is… by the superiority of its morality that a religion wins over souls and reveals them to a certain conception of things.
Morality | Religion | Superiority |
The only prayer which a well-meaning man can pray is, O ye gods, give me whate’er is fitting unto me.
At last religion has come to reckon with the fact that its highest quest is not for a supernatural order but just for natural goodness in the largest and fullest measure.