This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can’t get full eating this way. The wise person dines on something more subtle: he eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non-being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source. He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and becomes completely content.
Doubt | Knowledge | Self | Truth | Understanding | Wise | World |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
It is in the nature of political bodies always to see the evil in the opposite group, just as the individual has an ineradicable tendency to get rid of everything he does not know and does not want to know about himself by foisting it off on somebody else… Nothing has a more diverse and alienating effect upon society than this moral complacency and lack of responsibility, and nothing promotes understanding and rapprochement more than the mutual withdrawal of projections.
Complacency | Evil | Individual | Nature | Nothing | Responsibility | Society | Understanding | Society |
To be fruitful in invention, it is indispensable to have a habit of observation and reflection.
Habit | Indispensable | Invention | Observation | Reflection |
We accumulate opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.
Age | Understanding |
The mission of art is to achieve a deeper understanding of nature’s beauty. The mission, to put it another way, is to observe nature with an artistic mind, a mind bent on discovering beauty. Therefore, the kind of nature that the average person sees does not make art when it is reproduced.
Art | Beauty | Mind | Mission | Nature | Understanding | Art |
Where observation is concerned, chance favors only the prepared mind.
Chance | Mind | Observation |
To live a day, to care for a single day, is to shape a life. Each day is an opportunity to choose where to place our care. What shall we do today? What simple acts of remembrance will we use to punctuate our time and enrich our walk upon the earth this single day?
Care | Day | Earth | Life | Life | Opportunity | Time | Will |
Iris Murdoch, aka Dame Jean Iris Murdoch
Freedom is not choosing; that is merely the move that we make when all is already lost. Freedom is knowing and understanding and respecting things quite other than ourselves.
Freedom | Knowing | Understanding |
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Advance in understanding of nature or even in control of nature does not diminish God. God is not the sum total of what man does not know about nature or what man cannot control in nature.
Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.
Appreciation | Beginning | Life | Life | Mankind | Understanding | Will | Wonder | Worth | Happiness |
Red Jacket, aka Sagoyewatha NULL
You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, whey has not the Great Spirit given to tus, and not only to us, but what did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?
Knowledge | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Right | Spirit | Teach | Understanding | Worship | Understand |
Omananda Puri, aka Swami Omananda Puri, born Maud MacCarthy
There is nothing `abnormal’ in the world - there is only the lack of understanding of the normal.
Abnormal | Nothing | Understanding | World |
Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.
Kindness | Opportunity |
Indeed, the chief natural way whereby we can climb up to the understanding of the Deity is by a contemplation of our own souls.
Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power.
Opportunity | Power |