This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tawfiq al-Hakim or Tawfik el-Hakim
In the past, traditional art was based on making manifest what is enduring in man, like love, jealously, hatred, envy and greed… Today art has to look again at these unchanging qualities, because society is no longer unchanging. It is up to art today to show us what has become of these unchanging qualities in the world which is moving and changing.
Art | Envy | Greed | Love | Man | Past | Qualities | Society | World | Society | Art |
Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable but not quite. Life is not an illogicality, yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
Transactional leaders approach followers with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or subsidies for campaign contributions… The transforming leader looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the follower. The result of transforming leadership is a relationship of mutual stimulation and elevation that converts followers into leaders and may convert leaders into moral agents.
Looks | Motives | Relationship | Leader | Leadership |
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Looks | Opportunity | People | Work |
In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.
Arrogance | Awe | Beauty | Belief | Elegance | Humility | Looks | Object | Religion | Science | Sense | Theories | Truth | Universe | World | Beauty |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as “moral indignation,” which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. The “indignant” person has for once the satisfaction of despising and treating a creature as “inferior,” coupled with the feeling of his own superiority and rightness.
Envy | Hate | Indignation | Superiority | Virtue | Virtue |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
The bare fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and cannot admit compromise or limitations that scientific research looks on the whole field of human activity as its own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude towards any other power that seeks to usurp any part of its province.
God is the source and goal of ideals by which to live triumphantly in the face of starkest grief. The sufferer who finds God as the strength and mainstay of his life does not merely acquiesce before the inevitable with stoic fortitude. He looks the tragedy in the face, and looks up to new heights of spiritual beauty to which he may mount by using his grief as a stairway to God’s glory.
Beauty | Fortitude | Glory | God | Grief | Ideals | Inevitable | Life | Life | Looks | Stoic | Strength | Tragedy | Beauty | God |
Jules de Goncourt, fully Jules Huot de Goncourt
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite! There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.
Prayer is a way of increasing our sensitivity to the spiritual aspects of life. From this point of view, it is very much like exercise. A man’s muscles become responsive by training... The soul is stretched and enlarged by prayer just as the body is stretched and enlarged by physical exercise... Prayer is a way of aspiration. It is a way of lifting ourselves, of getting a higher look, of transcending self. For when a man looks at life only from inside himself, or only from within the walls of his home, or profession, seeing the world as though it were all in terms of his special interests, then he is “too full of himself to have any room for God.” But in prayer, he... relates his own little life and his own little needs and life of humanity. He lifts himself up by prayer, and achieves a high spiritual stature.
Aspiration | Body | God | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Man | Prayer | Self | Soul | Training | World |
On close scrutiny, the beast within us looks suspiciously like a sheep.
Looks |