This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Atheists in our midst are proof that all consciences can be accommodated here, even those that have no ground for holding that conscience is sacred, inalienable, and prior to civil society.
Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.
Authority | Conscience |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.
Conscience | Labor | Understanding |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercise, aerobics, martial arts for those who prefer concentrating on physical skills. Any specialization or expertise that one finds enjoyable and where one can improve one’s knowledge over time. The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention.
Control | Discipline | Important | Knowledge | Meditation | Order | Prayer | Skill | Will | Learn |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
Discipline | Life | Life | Necessity | People |
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, born Ludwig Mies
Let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work. Let us lead them into the healthy world of primitive building methods, where there was meaning in every stroke of an axe, expression in every bite of chisel.
Discipline | Meaning | World |
Mike Ditka, fully Michael Keller Ditka, Jr., aka "Iron" Mike Ditka
Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.
Discipline | Money | Power | Success |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Freedom is the absolute right of all adult men and women to seek permission for their action only from their own conscience and reason, and to be determined in their actions only by their own will, and consequently to be responsible only to themselves, and then to the society to which they belong, but only insofar as they have made a free decision to belong to it.
Absolute | Action | Conscience | Decision | Men | Right | Society | Society |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed — that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.
Conscience | Heaven | History | Ignorance | Intelligence | Men | Nothing |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
My dignity as a man, my human right which consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity. The materialistic conception of freedom is therefore a very positive, very complex thing, and above all, eminently social, because it can be realized only in society and by the strictest equality and solidarity among all men.
Conformity | Conscience | Convictions | Dignity | Equality | Freedom | Liberty | Right | Society | Society |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals.
Conscience | Individual | Liberty | Reflection | Right |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
The materialistic. realistic, and collectivist conception of freedom, as opposed to the idealistic, is this: Man becomes conscious of himself and his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the whole society. He frees himself from the yoke of external nature only by collective and social labor, which alone can transform the earth into an abode favorable to the development of humanity. Without such material emancipation the intellectual and moral emancipation of the individual is impossible. He can emancipate himself from the yoke of his own nature, i.e. subordinate his instincts and the movements of his body to the conscious direction of his mind, the development of which is fostered only by education and training. But education and training are preeminently and exclusively social ... hence the isolated individual cannot possibly become conscious of his freedom. To be free ... means to be acknowledged and treated as such by all his fellowmen. The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals. I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen. Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own.
Action | Body | Character | Conscience | Earth | Education | Freedom | Humanity | Individual | Liberty | Man | Means | Nature | Reflection | Relationship | Respect | Right | Society | Training | Society | Respect |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.
Discipline | Respect | Respect |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There will have to be rigid and iron discipline before we achieve anything great and enduring, and that discipline will not come by mere academic argument and appeal to reason and logic. Discipline is learnt in the school of adversity.
Argument | Discipline | Reason | Will |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline and humility. Unbridled license is a sign of vulgarity, injurious alike to self and one's neighbors.
Discipline | Freedom | Self |
Day after day train your heart out, refining your technique: Use the One to strike the Many! That is the discipline of the Warrior.
Day | Discipline | Heart |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
My dominion ends where that of conscience begins.
Conscience | Ends |
This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of ‘revolutionizing themselves and things,’ much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People’s Labor Party ‘revolutionaries’ is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of ‘proletarian morality’ replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little ‘Red Book’ and other sacred litanies.
Conservatism | Discipline | Dogma | Evidence | Labor | Little | Obedience | Sacred | Security | Society | Thought | Work | Society | Leader | Old | Thought |