This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Your subconscious mind produces in your daily life evidence of the thoughts you send back to it. The constant repetition of fear, anxiety and worry thoughts will bring upon you the same thing multiplied many times over, but the constant practice of positive thinking, making affirmations hour by hour that God is now healing your fears and worries, will bring magnificent results... You have the ability for successful living. You have the tools. The power you use is faith and the tools are your thoughts and ideas.
Ability | Anxiety | Anxiety | Evidence | Faith | Fear | God | Ideas | Life | Life | Mind | Power | Practice | Thinking | Will | Worry | God |
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.
The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.
Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Man’s ultimate aim is the realization of God, and all his activities, - social, religious – have to be guided by the ultimate aim of the vision of God. The immediate service of all human beings becomes a necessary part of the endeavor simply because the only way to god is to see Him in His creation and be one with it.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be mere seekers, would have become one with God, for Truth is God. But being only seekers we prosecute our quest and are conscious of our imperfection.
God | Imperfection | Truth | Vision |
D. W. Harding, fully Denys Clement Wyatt Harding
A necessary quality for the attainment of individuality is the ability to tolerate some degree of loneliness in the sense of independent adherence to values that those around you will not support.
Ability | Attainment | Individuality | Loneliness | Sense | Will |
The purpose of growth: to maximize our ability to be loving, joyful and creative… Growth is not just about striving to be better. It is also about enjoying the moment and accepting yourself as you are (knowing that you are or will do your best to change what you can).
Ability | Better | Change | Growth | Knowing | Purpose | Purpose | Will |
If no charismatic emerges, people may be truly bereft and lost in a sea of forces and pressures beyond their adaptive capacity. The society may die. If someone does emerge, the people may understandably attribute his rise to “divine grace.” Indeed, if he exercises leadership, he may well save his community and help it to renew itself. First, he binds people together by powerfully articulating their values, hopes, and pains. Second, he weaves their hopes into some image of the future. And third, he provides energy, strategy, and faith that the vision can be realized.
Capacity | Energy | Faith | Future | Grace | People | Society | Vision | Society |
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good… Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons… Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather and ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
Ability | Chance | Good | Hope | Joy | Mind | Observation | Sense | Success | Will | Work | World |
Neither existing nor evolving is a purpose – these are simply states of affairs. Demonstrating a trend toward complexity does not demonstrate purpose – it demonstrates only what happens when something new is added to something old. Nor does the ability to learn then apply what has been learned prove that life has a purpose.
The tyranny of conformity tends to deprive man of his inner identity, of his ability to stand still in the midst of flux, to remain a person in the midst of a crowd.
Ability | Conformity | Man | Tyranny |
Life’s development has been much harder to definitely trace than that of the universe. This is because biology’s countless combinations and permutations are exceedingly convoluted compared to the linearity of physics or the predictability of chemistry. Life’s ability to mutate and change over successive generations has meant that investigators cannot simply extrapolate backwards to determine what previously existed, nor look forward and predict what might result.