This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
Belief | Generosity | God | Life | Life | Man | Mortal | Poverty | Power | Rights | Wisdom | World |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
The divisions and boundaries that we perceive based upon our five senses are, in effect, an illusion. It’s my belief that the meaning of life changes from day to day, second to second. I believe we’re here to learn that we’re part of a creative force - I would go so far as to call that force divine. We’re here to learn that we can create a world and that we have a choice in what we create, and that our world, if we choose, can be a heaven or hell.
Belief | Choice | Day | Force | Heaven | Hell | Illusion | Life | Life | Meaning | Wisdom | World | Learn |
Inherent in any system of belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy: what is expected is observed and what is observed confirms the expectations. When an individual alters his belief system he becomes aware of vast new realms of possibility.
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.
Emotions | Organization | Soul | Taste | Wisdom |
If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception.
Belief | Cause | Common Sense | Memory | Pain | Perception | Power | Sense | Thought | Wisdom | Absurdity | Think | Thought |
We all would do well to entertain the possibility of new alternative realities; since it is our definition of reality that decides for each of us what is possible, and what is not possible... Our personal 'reality' is shaped by our thoughts. They determine how we perceive our future, our accomplishments, our relationships. Our emotions are our reactions to these thoughts and perceptions, and mirror our inner consciousness. They play a crucial role in our happiness and physical well-being.
Consciousness | Emotions | Future | Play | Reality | Wisdom | Happiness |
James Watson, fully James Dewey Watson
Science seldom proceeds in the straightforward logical manner imagined by outsiders. Instead, its steps forward (and sometimes backward) are often very human events in which personalities and cultural traditions play major roles... [Science moves with][ the spirit of an adventure characterized both by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty.
Adventure | Arrogance | Belief | Events | Play | Science | Spirit | Truth | Wisdom |
Of all the qualities of a theologian must possess, a devotional spirit is the chief. For the soul is larger than the mind, and the religious emotions lay hold on the truths to which they are related, on many sides at once. A powerful understanding, on the other hand, seizes on single points, and however enlarged in its own sphere, is never safe from its narrowness of view.
Emotions | Mind | Qualities | Safe | Soul | Spirit | Understanding | Wisdom | Truths |
The constants in all religion are the mystery of the universe, the nostalgia of the human spirit for an order beyond the show and flux of things to which it believes itself akin, and the belief that it has evidence of such an order.
Belief | Evidence | Mystery | Order | Religion | Spirit | Universe |
José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
Belief | Doubt | Superstition |
I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him.
A belief that we were created by God for a purpose does not then provide us with the kind of adequate account of life’s meaning we might expect. Religions are not clear about what this purpose is. The idea that it is to serve God seems deeply implausible and contrary to most conceptions of God’s nature.
Belief | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | God |
Truth should be the first lesson of the child and the last aspiration of manhood; for it has been well said that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.
Aspiration | Belief | Good | Human nature | Inquiry | Knowledge | Lesson | Love | Nature | Truth | Wisdom | Aspiration | Child |