This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Whatever complaints the neurotic patient may have, whatever symptoms he may present are rooted in his inability to love, if we mean by love a capacity for the experience of concern, responsibility, respect, and understanding of another person and the intense desire for that other person’s growth.
Capacity | Desire | Experience | Growth | Love | Present | Respect | Responsibility | Understanding |
The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now.
Attention | Body | Despair | Law | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |
The process of forgiveness allows you to turn your heart toward healing, release, and compassion instead of using your energy for revenge or punishment. Forgiveness allows you to build something positive in the present while still making sure not to repeat what happened in the past.
Compassion | Energy | Forgiveness | Heart | Past | Present | Punishment | Revenge | Forgiveness |
A passionate translation of the Sh’ma: Sh’ma: listen, or wake up. Yisroel: you who seek to understand and connect with God. Adonai: the Eternal One who has been present since the beginning of time and who expresses love and wisdom by entering our hearts and our world as Eloheynu: our God. Adonai Ekhad: this Eternal energy is the unity within and between all things.
Beginning | Energy | Eternal | God | Love | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom | World | Understand |
If, as Heraclitus said, “A man’s character is his fate” – that is, if our fate is largely determined by the habitual tendencies of our repetition compulsion-personality – then the power of consciousness is that it allows us to change impulses, we have what Kierkegaard called “the possibility of possibility”: the possibility of having a free choice and the moral responsibility that comes with it. In that sense, the fear of consciousness is ultimately the fear of moral responsibility, because if we own our anxiety, shame, and guilt, and allow ourselves to have full consciousness of emotions that motivate our behavior, then we will inevitably recognize the full weight of our responsibility for that behavior.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Behavior | Change | Character | Choice | Consciousness | Emotions | Fate | Fear | Free choice | Guilt | Man | Personality | Power | Responsibility | Sense | Shame | Will | Fate |
I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness, autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical Model’s ideal of quick fix, with its swimming-pool values of stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success and other superficial addictive pleasures
Acceptance | Awareness | Choice | Compassion | Conformity | Emotions | Growth | Love | Model | Respect | Responsibility | Self | Self-awareness | Society | Soul | Spirit | Success | Will | Society |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo-self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness.
Inferiority | Necessity | Present | Self | Weakness |
The only way to get rid of your problem is to change your belief, or reverse the false process of thought. Fear is always present when there is in harmony, and an affirmation will not in itself destroy fear. You must refuse to be intimidated by the seeming danger, whatever it is, and put your reliance on the Love of God. Then fear will begin to go.
Belief | Change | Danger | Destroy | Fear | God | Harmony | Love | Present | Thought | Will |
You can only live in the present… only act in the present… only experience in the present. What you call the future, things that you may be planning, or things that you may be dreading – all this is still but a present state of mind. This is the real meaning of the traditional phrase, The Eternal Now. The only joy you can experience is the joy you experience now. A happy memory is a present joy. The only pain you can experience is the pain of the present moment. Sad memories are present pain.
Eternal | Experience | Future | Happy | Joy | Meaning | Memory | Mind | Pain | Present |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The best politics is right action.
Goldie Hawn, fully Goldie Jeanne Hawn
We humans have the capacity to change the world with acts of love and kindness. Let’s start by teaching our children the importance of compassion.
Capacity | Change | Children | Compassion | Kindness | Love | World |
There’s a moment when the choice to act moves beyond a discussion of motives, for even an awareness of our own motives can become a form of necessity that lets our responsibility off the hook. And the moment of faith is a moment when no part of us is excused. With no ifs, no buts, no conditions, no escape clauses, all we are is challenged to rise to the choice and shoulder the responsibility for our answer.
Awareness | Choice | Discussion | Faith | Motives | Necessity | Responsibility | Awareness |
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.
Business has become, in this last half century, the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole.
Business | Responsibility | Society | Society |
Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling.
Awareness | Deeds | Important | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Words | Awareness |