This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
This is the difference between religion and philosophy. Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable; philosophy ends with the sense of the ineffable. Religion begins where philosophy ends.
Ends | Philosophy | Religion | Sense |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
Any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion.
Action | Beauty | Knowledge | Religion | Respect | Truth | Respect | Beauty | Value |
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 |
The beginning of faith is not a feeling for the mystery of living or a sense of awe, wonder, or fear. The root of religion is the question what to do with the feeling for the mystery of living, what to do with awe, wonder, or fear. Religion, the end of isolation, begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us. It is in that tense, eternal asking in which the soul is caught and in which man’s answer is elicited.
Awe | Beginning | Consciousness | Eternal | Faith | Fear | Isolation | Man | Mystery | Question | Religion | Sense | Soul | Wonder |
He who has no prayer free from his thoughts has no weapon for battle. By prayer I mean the prayer which is constantly active in the innermost secret places of the soul.
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era... Instead of worshipping supernatural rulers, it will sanctify the higher manifestations of human nature, in art and love, in intellectual comprehension and aspiring adoration, and will emphasize the fuller realization of life’s possibilities as a sacred trust.
Art | Era | Human nature | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Religion | Sacred | Trust | Will | Art |
“Were once asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.”
All authentic religion originates with mystical experience.
Experience | Mystical | Religion |
Prayer in action; it requires complete mobilization of heart, mind, and soul… For the soul, home is where the prayer is... Prayer calls for self-reflection, for contrition and repentance, examining and readjusting deeds and motivations, for recanting the ugly compulsions we follow, the tyranny of acquisitiveness, hatred, envy, resentment.
Action | Deeds | Envy | Heart | Mind | Prayer | Reflection | Repentance | Resentment | Self | Soul | Tyranny | Ugly | Deeds |
Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal
A child is born through the rending of the womb; a man is born through the rending of the world. The call to prayer signalizes both kinds of birth, the first is uttered by the lips, the second by the very soul.
The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments... Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time... Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time.
Eternal | Life | Life | Religion | Sacred | Sense | Time | Wealth |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
Any conflict which prevents the personality from attaining wholeness is a hindrance: all taboos against considering any part of the universe in relation to man and his destiny are hindrances; so, too, are all restrictions upon the free use of reason, or the free appeal of conscience. In other words, any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion.
Action | Beauty | Conscience | Destiny | Knowledge | Man | Personality | Reason | Religion | Respect | Truth | Universe | Wholeness | Words | Respect | Beauty | Value |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
Primitive societies without religion have never been found.
Religion |
Religion is not an opiate, for religion does not help people to forget, but to remember. It does not dull people. It does not say take, but give.
A religion is the organized quest of a people for salvation, for helping those who live by the civilization of that people to achieve their destiny as human beings.
Civilization | Destiny | People | Religion | Salvation |
The contribution of religion to the unity of all human beings is made, not in the intellectual but in the spiritual realm.
Susanne Langer, fully Susanne Katherina Langer née Knauth
As soon as religion becomes prosaic or perfunctory art appears somewhere else.