This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness.
Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |
Undisturbed calmness of mind is attained by cultivating friendliness toward the happy, compassion for the unhappy, delight in the virtuous, and indifference toward the wicked.
Calmness | Compassion | Happy | Indifference | Mind |
Maggie Ross, pen name for Martha Reeves
Pain is the source of compassion, and compassion shifts our perspective on pain, which frees us from the fear of death.
Compassion | Death | Fear | Pain |
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
Will |
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Compassion | Man | Peace | Will |
The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.
If enough people consider compassion to be important, then the world becomes a more compassionate place.
Compassion | Enough | Important | People | World |
Our task must be to free ourselves...by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
Beauty | Compassion | Nature |
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
Beauty | Compassion | Despair | Dogma | Faith | Fear | Hope | Ignorance | Joy | Learning | Love | Optimism | Pessimism | Reason | Selfishness | Sin | Truth | Beauty |
What so great happiness as to be beloved, and to know that we deserve to be beloved? What so great misery as to be hated, and to know that we deserve to be hated?
We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century.
Contradiction | Justice | Men | Nations | Principles | Will | World | Happiness |
The task of democracy is to relive mass misery and yet preserve the freedom of the individual.
Democracy | Freedom | Individual |