This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When the print press examines a politician’s performance, very few voters are interested in detail. The essence of the modern campaign is personality politics: the direct impressions that viewers form from thirty-second daily blips on the Boss Tube, preaching homilies and honing bumpers-sticker themes to stick in voter’s memories.
Personality | Politics |
Who sees variety and not the unity wanders on from death to death.
To say that God exceeds the powers of our comprehension is not to say that we do not know God. We know empirically the actual, present, dynamic working of creativity in our midst, progressively creating, saving and transforming the personality of man when required conditions are present. Therefore we know God and know him more intimately than any other, because he is so deeply involved in our existence. But to know God thus does not mean that we can construct in our imagination a picture of him or comprehend the depth and fullness of his being.
Creativity | Dynamic | Existence | God | Imagination | Man | Personality | Present | God |
If by prayer I mean the power of words to persuade God to do things, then prayer is futile and foolish. One might utter the words of the most devout prayer that was ever breathed and yet not be praying at all. It is the attitude of the personality which is the prayer, not the words.
He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought.
Future | Illusion | Imagination | Mindfulness | Past | Perception | Power | Present | Sense | Thought | Will | Thought |
In general the character tradition assumes that institutions such as families, schools, and long-lived organizations will act more wisely than individuals and also that individuals who have lived through a variety of experiences have learned things that many young people do not yet know.
The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilization.
Civilization | Personality | Purpose | Purpose |
Properly understood, prayer is a mature activity indispensable to the fullest development of personality - the ultimate integration of man’s highest faculties. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.
Body | Indispensable | Integration | Man | Mind | Personality | Prayer | Spirit | Strength |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
A human being may be defined as a personality with a will of its own capable of making moral choices between good and evil.
Evil | Good | Personality | Will |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The emergence of a superman or a great mystic or a genius or a superior personality inevitably precipitates a social conflict. The conflict will be more or less acute, according to the degree in which the creative individual happens to rise above the average level of his former kin and kind. But some conflict is inevitable, since the social equilibrium which the genius has upset by the mere fact of his personal emergence has eventually to be restored either by his social triumph or by his social defeat.
Defeat | Genius | Individual | Inevitable | Personality | Will |
If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world it will come through the expression of your own personality - that single spark of divinity that sets you apart and makes you different from every other living creature.
Divinity | Personality | Will | World |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The superior man develops his personality by means of his wealth, the inferior man develops wealth at the expense of his personality.
Man | Means | Personality | Wealth |
In your attempt to break down the boundaries of a personality you are building a new prison for yourself.
Personality | Prison |
A clear stream reflects all the objects on its shore, but is unsullied by them; so it should be with our hearts; they should show the effect of all earthly objects, but remain unstained by any... All worldly things are so much without us, and so subject to variety and uncertainty, that they do not make us when they come, nor mend us while they stay, nor undo us when they are taken away.
Ellen Key, fully Ellen Karolina Sofia Key
The destruction of the personality is the great evil of the time.
Evil | Personality | Time |
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways... But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consist in being perceived.
Existence | Ideas | Imagination | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Words |
Grayson Kirk, fully Grayson Louis Kirk
The most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.
Education | Important | Individual | Life | Life | Personality | Rest |