This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Battles are never the end of war; for the dead must be buried and the cost of the conflict must be paid.
In the social production of their existence, human beings necessarily enter into determinate relations, independent of their will, relations of production, corresponding to a given stage of development of their material productive powers. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and tow which correspond determinate forms of social consciousness. the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of human beings which determines their existence, but their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive powers of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same things in terms of right - with the property relations in the framework of which they have thus far operated. From forms of development of the productive powers these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
Consciousness | Era | Existence | Life | Life | Property | Revolution | Right | Society | Will | Society |
It would not be going too far to assert that… conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and hwo is… unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action.
Action | Consciousness | Growth | Problems | Society | War | Society |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
God’s never tied man’s salvation to any pattern. Whatever possibilities inhere in any pattern of life inhere in all, because God has given it so and denied it to none. One good way does not conflict with another, for not all people may travel the same road.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)
Ability | Cooperation | Energy | Evolution | Harmony |
No conflict is so severe as his who labors to subdue himself.
Suzanne LaFollette, fully Suzanne Clara La Follette
Laws are felt only when the individual comes into conflict with them.
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
In libertinage, nothing is frightful, because everything libertinage suggests is also a natural inspiration; the most extraordinary, the most bizarre acts, those which most arrantly seem to conflict with every law, every human institution.
Inspiration | Law | Nothing |
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof.
Contradiction | Good | Society |
Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.
If the substance of the spiritual experience is always and everywhere the same, differences in its expression and interpretation are secondary and not a valid cause for conflict and intolerance. The world to which our quantum brain connects us is fundamentally one, whether its oneness is due to an information field within the natural world or the work of a divine transcendent intelligence. To enter into communion with this oneness has been the quest of all the great teachers and spiritual masters. And to understand the nature of this oneness has been, and is, the ultimate quest of all great scientists. Still today, physicists seek the one equation that would anchor their famous "Theory of Everything," the theory that would account for all the laws of nature and explain everything that ever happened in our integrally whole universe. Einstein said that knowing this equation would be reading the mind of God.
Cause | Experience | Famous | Knowing | Mind | Nature | Oneness | Reading | Work | World | Understand |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
I believe that if an individual is not on the path to transcending his society and seeing in what way it furthers or impedes the development of human potential, he cannot enter into intimate contact with his humanity. If the tabus, restrictions, distorted values appear "natural" to him, this is a clear indication that he cannot have a real knowledge of human nature. I believe that society, while having a function both stimulating and inhibiting at the same time, has always been in conflict with humanity. Only when the purpose of society is identified with that of humanity will society cease to paralyze man and encourage his dominance.
Humanity | Individual | Knowledge | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Society | Will | Society |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction... The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad... Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves.
Consciousness | Wisdom |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Any conflict will create more barriers. If there is fear and you start doing something about it, then a new fear has entered: fear of the fear. It has become more complex. So the one thing to be done is, if fear is there, accept it. Don't do anything about it because doing will not help. Anything that you do out of fear will create more fear; anything that you do out of confusion will add more to confusion. Don't do anything.
The relationship of utility is based on violence; the family as a means of mutual inward security makes for conflict and confusion.
Family | Means | Relationship | Security |
A man who seeks to avoid the world is still related; he is running away from conflict and not understanding it. In relationship, which is activity between you and another, the ways of the self are revealed.
Man | Self | Understanding | World |
Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter. You have to understand the central cause of conflict and sorrow and then dissolve it and not merely look to the outside for peace.
Cause | Life | Life | Relationship | Security | Sorrow | Will | Think | Understand |