This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.
I do take law very seriously, deeply seriously, because fragile as reason is and limited as law is as the institutionalized medium of reason, that's all we have standing between us and the tyranny of mere will and the cruelty of unbridled, undisciplined feeling.
Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
Confidence | Hope | Indispensable | Life | Life | Trust | Virtue | Virtue |
Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents — blood, family, tribe — to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.
Dependence | Individual | Mother |
The universe we observe and inhabit is a secondary product of the energy sea that was there before there was anything there at all. Hindu and Chinese cosmologies have always maintained that the things and beings that exist in the world are a concretization or distillation of the basic energy of the cosmos, descending from its original source. The physical world is a reflection of energy vibrations from more subtle energy fields. Creation and all subsequent existence, is a progression downward and outward from the primordial source... In Indian philosophy the ultimate end of the physical world is a return to Akasha, its original subtle-energy womb. At the end of time as we know it, the almost infinitely varied things and forms of the manifest world dissolve into formlessness... In Akasha, all attributes of the manifest world merge into a state that is beyond attributes: the state of Brahman.
Energy | Philosophy | Reflection | Time | Universe | World |
Instant, multidimensional correlations are coming to light between the parts of a living organism, and even between organisms and environments... [these] are nearly as 'entangled' as microparticles that originate in the same quantum state [such as EPR pairs]... What happens to one cell or organ also happens in some way to all other cells and organs... [also] what happens in the external milieu of the organism is reflected in some way in its internal milieu. Thanks to this coherence, the organism can evolve in tune with its environment... [Darwinian evolution and random mutation is not enough]... That our world is not populated solely by the simplest of organisms, such as bacteria ... is due in the last analysis to the kind of 'entanglement' that exists among genes, organisms, organism species, and their niches within the biosphere.” Furthermore, “the organism's coherence goes beyond the coherence of a biochemical system; in some respects it attains the coherence of a quantum system... Simple collisions among neighbouring molecules... must be complemented by a network of instant communication that correlates all parts of the living system, even those that are distant from one another. Rare molecules, for example, are seldom contiguous, yet they find each other throughout the organism. There would not be sufficient time for this to occur by a random process of jiggling and mixing; the molecules need to locate and respond to each other specifically, even if they are distant
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge... It has nothing to do with the individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. Indeed in a certain sense two "I"'s are identical namely when one disregards all special contents — their Karma. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further... when man dies his Karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.
The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.
Nothing |
We are sinful not merely because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we find ourselves is sinful, quite independent of guilt.
It takes no effort to love. The state has its own innate joy. Questions answer themselves if you are aware enough. Life is safe; flowing with the current of being is the simplest way to live. Resistance never really succeeds. Controlling the flow of life is impossible.
Fritz Perls, fully Friedrich "Fritz" (Frederick) Salomon Perls
To mature means to take responsibility for your life, to be on your own. Psychoanalysis fosters the infantile state by considering that the past is responsible for the illness.
Means | Past | Psychoanalysis | Responsibility |
Faith from its essential nature implies the fallen state of man, while it recognizes the principles of the covenant of grace. It is itself the condition of that covenant. It is a grace which is alike distinguished from the love of angels and the faith of devils. It is peculiar to the returning sinntr. None but a lost sinner needs it; none but a humbled sinner relishes it.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.
Freedom |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and, eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful.
Charity | Circumstances | Hope | Means | Power | Virtue | Virtue |
George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
We must present democracy as a force holding within itself the seeds of unlimited progress by the human race. By our actions we should make it clear that such a democracy is a means to a better way of life, together with a better understanding among nations. Tyranny inevitably must retire before the tremendous moral strength of the gospel of freedom and self-respect for the individual, but we have to recognize that these democratic principles do not flourish on empty stomachs, and that people turn to false promises of dictators because they are hopeless and anything promises something better than the miserable existence that they endure. However, material assistance alone is not sufficient. The most important thing for the world today in my opinion is a spiritual regeneration which would reestablish a feeling of good faith among men generally. Discouraged people are in sore need of the inspiration of great principles. Such leadership can be the rallying point against intolerance, against distrust, against that fatal insecurity that leads to war. It is to be hoped that the democratic nations can provide the necessary leadership.
Better | Democracy | Existence | Faith | Force | Freedom | Good | Important | Insecurity | Inspiration | Means | Men | Nations | Need | Opinion | People | Present | Principles | Progress | Strength | Tyranny | Understanding | World | Leadership |
That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
Enjoyment | Life | Life | Means | Men | Nature | Happiness |
We come into the world, and know not how: we live in it in a state of self-nescience, and go hence again, and are as ignorant of our recess.