This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To escape criticism--do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
The impulse to escape an untenable situation often prompts human beings not to shrink back but to plunge ahead.
Impulse |
If humanity is to have a hopeful future, there is no escape from the preeminent involvement and responsibility of the single human soul, in all its loneliness and frailty.
Future | Humanity | Loneliness | Responsibility | Soul |
The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation.
Motives | Observation |
True spirituality is not a removal or escape from life. It is an opening, a seeing of the world with a deeper vision that is less self-centered, a vision that sees through dualistic views to the underlying interconnectedness of all life. Liberation is the discovery of freedom in the very midst of our bodies and minds.
Discovery | Freedom | Life | Life | Self | Spirituality | Vision | World | Discovery |
John Ciardi, fully John Anthony Ciardi
The classroom should be an entrance to the world, not an escape from it.
World |
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
The culture of organization runs strongly to the shifting of problems to others – to an escape from personal mental effort and responsibility. This, in turns, becomes the larger public attitude. It is for others to do the worrying, take the action. In the world of the great organization, problems are not solved but passed on. And there is a further effect. The delegation process just cited adds ineluctably to the layers of command and to the prestige associated with command. That prestige is regularly measured by the number of individual subordinates.
Action | Culture | Effort | Individual | Organization | Problems | Public | Responsibility | World |
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next, to escape the censures of the world. If the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself, seconded by the applauses of the public. A man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behavior is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him.
Behavior | Care | Conduct | Heart | Man | Mind | Opinion | Public | World |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Behavior | Freedom | Giving | Individual | Organization | Power | Responsibility |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
Consciousness | Evolution | Pain | Suffering |
A person who reads and studies and converses on current events in science, philosophy, political will, in the process, escape from the dull self-centeredness, and his participatory awareness of life in its infinite vitality will tend to produce the excitement which is inherent in happiness. Unfortunately, thinking the interesting thoughts which create happiness is a disciplinary process which too few people employ.
Awareness | Events | Excitement | Life | Life | People | Philosophy | Science | Self | Thinking | Will | Awareness | Happiness |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
True happiness, lasting happiness, lies only in god, “Having whom no other gain is greater.” In Him is the only safety, the only shelter, the only escape from all our fears. You have no other security in the world, no other freedom. The only true freedom lies in God.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Life is worth nothing if it is not a continuous overcoming of problems. Each problem that waits for a solution at your hand is a religious duty imposed upon you by life itself. Any escape from problems, physical or mental, is an escape from life, as there can be no life that is not full of problems.
The efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us into it.
Destiny |