This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.
Teaching is more difficult that learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. The real teacher, in fact, let nothing else be learned than learning. His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him, if by "learning" we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.
Conduct | Impression | Learning | Nothing | Learn | Understand |
Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
Increasing your gratitude about the good things in your past intensifies positive memories, and learning how to forgive past wrongs defuses the bitterness that makes satisfaction impossible.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The greatest threats to human survival will not be natural ones, but originate from inside ourselves.. For our ancestors, understanding themselves better was a pleasant luxury. But nowadays learning to control the mind may have become a greater priority for survival than seeking any further advantages the hard sciences could bring.
Better | Control | Learning | Luxury | Mind | Survival | Understanding | Will |
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.
Beginning | Books | Determination | Freedom | Learning | Self | Self-determination | Wisdom |
The study of history is in the truest sense an education and a training for political life... The most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Dignity | Education | Fortune | History | Learning | Life | Life | Method | Sense | Study | Training | Vicissitudes |
Our eating, trading, marrying, and learning are mistaken by us for ends and realities, whilst they are properly symbols only; when we have come, by a divine leading [illness?] into the inner firmament, we are apprised of the unreality or representative character of what we esteem final.
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!
Age | Learning | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Rank | Respect | Riches | Soul | Thought | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Respect | Thought |
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
At the beginning of the spiritual journey, many of us pushed away our humanity in an attempt to embrace our divinity... we've been learning to accept rather than reject our human qualities, creating a new partnership between the mundane and transcendent parts of ourselves.
Beginning | Divinity | Humanity | Journey | Learning | Qualities |
The world can never be learned by learning all its details.
Is not prayer also a study of truth – a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall at the same time kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation.
God | Learning | Light | Man | Object | Prayer | Science | Soul | Study | Thought | Time | Truth | Will | God |
Addictive spirituality creates dependence in the practitioner (frequently to authoritarian leaders and their communities), an avoidance of personal responsibility, and loss of individuality through social controls, such as fear, guilt, or greed for power or bliss. It also tends to suppress rational inquiry into the teachings. Healthy spirituality, on the other hand, supports the practitioner's freedom, autonomy, self-esteem, and social responsibility. It is based on experience, rather than belief or dogma; it does not create idols out of spiritual teachers; and it empowers students by emphasizing democratic forms of learning and teaching, rather than the authoritarian model that has dominated spiritual life for millennia.
Belief | Dependence | Dogma | Esteem | Experience | Fear | Freedom | Greed | Guilt | Individuality | Inquiry | Learning | Life | Life | Model | Power | Responsibility | Self | Self-esteem | Spirituality | Loss |
Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty, and learning teacheth safely, when experience maketh more miserable than wise.
Experience | Learning | Wise |