This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is deplorable, but not tragic, simply to be a victim of circumstance. Sheer victimization is not an assertion - and it naturally makes not for vision but for frustration. The victimizing circumstances, or accidents, seem arbitrary and exorbitant, even silly.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
At one time, a freethinker was a man who had been brought up in the conceptions of religion, law and morality, who reached freethought only after conflict and difficulty. But now a new type of born freethinkers has appeared, who grow up without so much as hearing that there used to be laws of morality, or religion, that authorities existed... In the old days, you see, if a man - a Frenchman, for instance- wished to get an education, he would have set to work to study the classics, the theologians, the tragedians, historians and philosophers- and you can realize all the intellectual labour involved. But nowadays he goes straight for the literature of negation, rapidly assimilates the essence of the science of negation, and thinks he's finished.
Langdon Gilkey, fully Langdon Brown Gilkey
Persons are thinking and reflective as well as merely existing beings. They have unanswered puzzles in their minds as well as unrelieved estrangement in their souls. They have skeptical doubts about the truth they possess as well as despair about the meaning of life that is theirs. They are curious about intellectual answers as well as hungry for a new mode of being or existing. And clearly these two levels, the existential and the intellectual-reflective, are interacting and interrelated all the time.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.
Assertion | Church | Falsehood | Meaning | Religion | Science |
Mel Levine, formally Melvin D Levine
Yet these types of responses to children with learning differences are all too common. The fact is that these kids often have good minds with real and obvious intellectual strengths. However, they suffer from what is often subtle dysfunction - patterns of brain wiring that makes certain aspects of learning exceedingly difficult. These children are highly vulnerable - and they're slipping through the cracks.
The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.
Order |
The notion of saving the planet has nothing to do with intellectual honesty or science. The fact is that the planet was here long before us and will be here long after us. The planet is running fine. What people are talking about is saving themselves and saving their middle-class lifestyles and saving their cash flow.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
The nationalization of intellectual life, which must be attempted under Socialism, must make all intellectual progress impossible.
Progress |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
No censor, no emperor, no pope, has ever possessed the power to suppress intellectual freedom which would be possessed by a socialist community.
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.
Madonna Kolbenschlag, fully Madonna Claire Kolbenschlag
People do not change because of intellectual convictions or ethical inclinations, but rather through transformed imaginations.
Change | Convictions |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
None of us constitutes a material whole, identical for everyone, which a person has only to go look up as though we were a book of specifications or a last testament; our social personality is a creation of the minds of others. Even the very simple act that we call "seeing a person we know" is in part an intellectual one. We fill the physical appearance of the individual we see with all the notions we have about him, and of the total picture that we form for ourselves, these notions certainly occupy the greater part.
Appearance | Individual | Personality |
I was taught that the world had a lot of problems; that I could struggle and change them; that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate; and that service is the rent each of us pays for living -- the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals
Change | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Service | Struggle | Time | World | Privilege |
We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life.
Age | Beginning | Childhood | Consequences | Dawn | Education | Humanity | Life | Life | Child |
While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings -- upon the spirit that animates mankind.
Civilization | Qualities | Spirit |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
God's nature as the ocean of love cannot be grasped by the mind. God has to be known through love and not through the intellectual search after miracles. That is the reason why, for those who are closest and dearest to me, I do not perform miracles. I would rather have no following than use miracles for convincing others of my Divinity.
God | Love | Miracles | Nature | Reason | Search | Following | God |
I'm talking about paying attention to your inner voice, paying attention to the heart. Science has shown us that the heart is made of 65% of the neurons that are in the brain. So there's scientific evidence to show that there is a thinking heart. And this has also been proven with heart transplant patients who are then thinking thoughts they've never thought before and saying things they've never said before. They would go back to a relative of the heart donor who would say, "My husband used to say that." We think as much with the hearts as we do with the brains. Our culture has emphasized the intellectual part, the rational part. It's ironic that the leading edge of science is showing that there's more to it than that! It just proves to me what the great traditions have taught from time immemorial: There's an invisible world, an inner world, and we all have that inside of us. Most of us are very good at covering up the inner voice that's speaking to us all the time. What we have to do is find ways to connect with that inner voice, and listen to it.
Attention | Culture | Evidence | Good | Heart | Husband | Science | Talking | Thinking | Thought | Time | Think | Thought |
Michael Harrington, fully Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington
Our affluent society contains those of talent and insight who are driven to prefer poverty, to choose it, rather than to submit to the desolation of an empty abundance. It is a strange part of the other America that one finds in the intellectual slums.
Desolation | Insight | Society | Talent | Society |