This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
There are three classes of people in the world. The first learn from their own experience - these are wise; the second learn from the experiences of others - these are the happy; the third neither learn from their own experience nor the experience of others - these are fools.
Life is that which we see and experience through the spirit; but the world around us we come to know through our understanding and reason. And such knowledge brings us great joy or sorrow.
Experience | Joy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Reason | Sorrow | Spirit | Understanding | World |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
When we cling, often forever, to our old patterns of thinking and behaving, we fall to negotiate any crisis, to truly grow up, and to experience the joyful sense of rebirth that accompanies the successful transition into greater maturity.
Experience | Sense | Thinking | Old |
As the greatest single social influence during the formative years, schools have been the instruments of our greatest denial, unconsciousness, conformity, and broken connections. Just as allopathic medicine treats symptoms without concern for the whole system, schools break knowledge and experience into “subjects,” relentlessly turning wholes into parts, flowers into petals, history into events, without ever restoring continuity... Worse yet, not only the mind is broken, but too often, so is the spirit. Allopathic teaching produces the equivalent of iatrogenic, or doctor-caused” illness - teacher-caused learning disabilities. We might call these pedogenic illnesses. The child who may have come to school intact, with the budding courage to risk and explore, finds stress enough to permanently diminish that adventure.
Adventure | Conformity | Courage | Enough | Events | Experience | History | Influence | Knowledge | Learning | Mind | Risk | Spirit | System | Unconsciousness | Child |
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
Acceptance | Experience | Fear | Journey | Love | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Reality |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
A righteous person once asked, “On which day of your life did you experience the greatest amount of joy?” The righteous man replied, “It was the day when I traveled on a ship and someone greatly humiliated me. He treated me with ultimate disgrace. Nevertheless I did not feel even a drop of resentment. I experienced great joy that I reached such a level that no insult could cause me any pain.”
Cause | Day | Disgrace | Experience | Insult | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Pain | Resentment | Insult |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The soul that would experience this birth must detach herself from all outward things: within herself completely at one with herself... You must have an exalted mind an a burning heart in which, nevertheless, reign silence and stillness.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
A good society makes it possible for each person to develop the skills necessary to experience flow in socially productive activities. At the same time, it guards against anyone’s exploiting the psychic energy of another person for his or her own advantage. There is a constant watch for oppressors and parasites. According to this perspective, freedom does not apply to doing, but to being.
Energy | Experience | Freedom | Good | Society | Time | Society |
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.
Experience | Man | Technology | Universe | World |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. For instance, feeling secure is an important component of happiness... risks are inevitable.
Better | Change | Experience | Goals | Important | Inevitable | Life | Life |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
No matter how much we strive to understand, ultimate reality will always remain hidden? Only if the search for truth is motivated by the desire to reach an absolute answer. The person looking for certainty is bound to be disappointed... If on the other hand we realize that the partial truths we uncover are all legitimate aspects of the unknowable universe, then we can learn to enjoy the search and derive from it the pleasure one gets from any creative act... One must painstakingly match one’s preconceptions against actual, ongoing experience to begin separating truth from illusion.
Absolute | Desire | Experience | Illusion | Pleasure | Reality | Search | Truth | Universe | Will | Learn | Truths |
When present living is enough, I experience myself as being enough.
Enough | Experience | Present |
Wisdom is not to be obtained from textbooks, but must be coined out of human experience in the flame of life.
Experience | Life | Life | Wisdom |
Nikki Giovanni, fully Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni
Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.
In caring I experience the other as having potentialities and the need to grow. In helping the other grow I do not impose my own direction; rather, I allow the direction of the other's growth to guide what I do, to help determine how I am to respond.
Experience | Growth | Need |
Every absurdity has a champion to defend it; for error is always talkative.