This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The political organization of the state rests both on force and on faith.
Faith | Force | Organization |
A thing is known according to the state of consciousness of the knower.
Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most advanced state it takes the title of judgment. Hume quotes Fontenelle's ingenious distinction between the common watch that tells the hours, and the delicately constructed one that marks the seconds and smallest differences of time.
Cultivation | Day | Distinction | Good | Religion | Taste | Temper | Title | Wisdom |
It seems that a big factor that contributes to our state of happiness is the attitude we have about life. We alone are responsible for the attitude we have about things. We can decide to look for the good in life, or we can agonize over that which did not go the way we wanted and stress about what the future might bring.
Joan Chittister, fully Sister Joan D. Chittister
Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.
Abuse | Children | Commitment | Conscience | God | Individual | Law | Morality | Obedience | Sin | Soul |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Values do not exist apart from our experience of them… what is not an experience cannot be of intrinsic value… intrinsic values, or immediate values, are subjective, or dependent on the state of mind of the beholder.
Experience | Mind |
Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
If the moral and physical fiber of its manhood and its womanhood is not a state concern, the question is, what is?
Question |
Action makes propaganda’s effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is not obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.
Absurd | Action | Authority | Justification | Obedience | Past | Receive | Will | Propaganda |
Parenthood: that state of being better chaperoned than you were before marriage.
Never do anything against conscience, even if the state demands it.
You can only live in the present… only act in the present… only experience in the present. What you call the future, things that you may be planning, or things that you may be dreading – all this is still but a present state of mind. This is the real meaning of the traditional phrase, The Eternal Now. The only joy you can experience is the joy you experience now. A happy memory is a present joy. The only pain you can experience is the pain of the present moment. Sad memories are present pain.
Eternal | Experience | Future | Happy | Joy | Meaning | Memory | Mind | Pain | Present |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
The ultimate reality is beyond all names. “I” signifies the radical subjectivity of the state of Realization. It is in itself the complete statement of Reality.
Reality |
Jesse Helms, fully Jesse Alexander Helms, Jr.
There is no lie too improbable, no distortion too great, no smear campaign too dirty for the State Department and the media to embrace.
Dirty |