This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nachman of Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Bratslav, Nachman from Uman NULL
The Blessed Holy One constantly constricts his godliness from utmost infinity to the most finite center point of this physical world and he sends to each person thought, speech and deed according to the person and according to the time and place. He enclothes within the thought, speech and deed, hints, in order to bring the person close to his service. Therefore a person needs to delve his mind into this and expand his consciousness in order to understand what the hints are in their details which Hashem is sending to him in the thoughts, words, and deeds of this day according to the specific circumstances he finds himself in. In business or work and in everything that Hashem sends to him each day he needs to delve and expand his mind in it, in order to understand the hints of Hashem.
Business | Circumstances | Consciousness | Day | Deeds | Mind | Order | Speech | Time | Work | World | Deeds | Business | Blessed | Understand |
Big pay and little responsibility are circumstances seldom found together.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
One can show the following: given any rule, however "fundamental" or "necessary" for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social surroundings. To those who look at the rich material provided by history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the form of clarity, precision, 'objectivity', 'truth', it will become clear that there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes.
Circumstances | Man | Order | Security | Will |
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Given any rule, however 'fundamental' or 'necessary' for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite. For example, there are circumstances when it is advisable to introduce, elaborate and defend ad hoc hypotheses, or hypotheses which contradict well-established and generally accepted experimental results, or hypotheses whose content is smaller than the content of the existing and empirically adequate alternative, or self-inconsistent hypotheses, and soon.
Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend
Those who violate the rules of a language do not enter new territory; they leave the domain of meaningful discourse. Even facts in these circumstances dissolve, because they are shaped by the language and subjected to its limitations.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
A strong determination to be happy will help you. Do not wait for your circumstances to change, thinking falsely that in them lies the trouble. Do not make unhappiness a chronic habit, thereby afflicting yourself and your associates. It is blessedness for yourself and others if you are happy. If you possess happiness you possess everything; to be happy is to be in tune with God. That power to be happy comes through meditation.
Blessedness | Circumstances | Determination | Happy | Power | Thinking | Unhappiness | Will | Happiness |
Develop a dogged determination to follow through on your plan, regardless of obstacles, criticism, or circumstances ... or what other people say, think, or do.
Circumstances | Determination | People |
Have the dogged determination to follow through to achieve your goal; regardless of circumstances or whatever other people say, think, or do.
Circumstances | Determination | People |
Paul Wellstone, fully Paul David Wellstone
A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
Peggy Noonan, born Margaret Ellen Noonan
I now know that God has a plan for each of us. The thing is to find out what it is. How? Through prayer, through keeping your mind open, and through the circumstances of daily life and the people you meet.
Circumstances | God | Life | Life | Mind | People | Plan | God |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
The direction which the revolution will take depends, no doubt, upon the sum total of the various circumstances that determine the coming of the cataclysm. But it can be predicted in advance, according to the vigor of revolutionary action displayed in the preparatory period by the different progressive parties. ... The party which has made most revolutionary propaganda and which has shown most spirit and daring will be listened to on the day when it is necessary to act, to march in front in order to realize the revolution.
Action | Circumstances | Daring | Day | Order | Revolution | Spirit | Will | Propaganda |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
The very essence of the present economic system is, that the worker can never enjoy the well-being he has produced, and that the number of those who live at his expense will always augment. The more a country is advanced in industry, the more this number grows. Inevitably, industry is directed, and will have to be directed, not towards what is needed to satisfy the needs of all, but towards that which, at a given moment, brings in the greatest temporary profit to a few. Of necessity, the abundance of some will be based on the poverty of others, and the straitened circumstances of the greater number will have to be maintained at all costs, that there may be hands to sell themselves for a part only of that which they are capable of producing; without which, private accumulation of capital is impossible!
Abundance | Circumstances | Industry | Poverty | Present | System | Will |
All the particular moral judgments we intuitively make are likely to derive from discarded religious systems, from warped views of sex and bodily functions, or from customs necessary for the survival of the group in social and economic circumstances that now lie in the distant past.
The nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed - as a robot might be artificially constructed - to mimic the pain behavior of humans. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species' prospects of survival... it is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings.
Behavior | Capacity | Circumstances | Pain |
The daily circumstances of life will afford us opportunities enough of glorifying God in trust, without our waiting for any extraordinary calls upon faith, our faith. Let us remember that the extraordinary circumstances of life are but few; that much of life may slip past without their occurrence; and that if we be not faithful and trusting in that which is little, we are not likely to be so in that which is great... Let our trust be reared in the humble nursery of our own daily experience, with its ever recurring little wants and trials, and sorrows; and then, when need be, it will come forth, to do such great things as are required of it.
Circumstances | Enough | God | Life | Life | Little | Need | Past | Trust | Waiting | Wants | Will | God |
Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realized and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.
Circumstances | Enough | Good | Justify | Necessity | Right | Teach | Time |
Prince Metternich, fully Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich
Any plan conceived in moderation must fail when the circumstances are set in extremes.
Circumstances | Moderation | Plan | Moderation |
I have frequently pointed out in a variety of contexts that it is far from my intention to cast blame on parents… I have also carefully explained that I do not regard external circumstances as the cause of neurosis but rather the child’s psychological situation – that is, the impossibility of articulating his or her strong feelings caused by traumatic experiences.
Blame | Cause | Circumstances | Feelings | Impossibility | Intention | Regard |
As I think back over my last twenty years' work, in the light of my present understanding, I can find no patient who ability to experience his true feelings was not seriously impaired. Yet, without this basic ability, all our work with the patient's instinctual conflicts is illusory: we might increase his intellectual knowledge, and in some circumstances strengthen his resistance, but we shall not touch the world of his feelings.
Ability | Circumstances | Experience | Feelings | Light | Present | Work | World | Think |