This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Within you is the divine capacity to manifest and attract all that you need or desire.
Opportunity | Obstacle |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
May I suggest that the deepest experience in vulnerability is to completely accept its Suchness as the ego/Ego coming into fuller relationship with the Divine. Thought forms of past, present, and future are simply too ego indulgent in the later stages of life. Variations on this theme are Masochism/Sadism and Pleasers/InyourFaceers. They are legitimate paths unless arrested by the ego too frightened to see what actually lurks under the drive to power.
Attention | Dynamic | Ego | Life | Life | Mystery | Nothing | Opportunity | People | Wholeness | Will | Loss | Think |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination.
Man | Opportunity | Training |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
Absolute | Equality | Freedom | Genius | Life | Life | Man | Men | Opportunity | Order | Right | World |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Mathematicians, it is often said, tend to be musical. It is less well known that problems arising from music have played an important role in the discovery of fundamental mathematical ideas. Questions about the vibrations of a piano string led to a fierce controversy that forced mathematicians to clarify their ideas about area, continuity, and the convergence of series.
Education | Knowledge | Nothing | Opportunity | Will | Trouble | Teacher |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When a revolutionary party has not the support of a majority either among the vanguard of the revolutionary class or among the rural population, there can be no question of a rising. A rising must have not only the majority, but must have the incoming revolutionary tide over the whole country, the complete moral and political bankruptcy of the old regime--and a deep-seated sense of insecurity among all these irresolute elements.
Opportunity | Peace |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.
Ability | Energy | Indignation | Opportunity | Struggle |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
Children | Love | Opportunity | Soul |
But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves.
Behavior | Change | Compassion | Design | Focus | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Motives | Need | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Society | System | Will | Society |
Even though our very survival is in question, we tend to look at the crisis superficially, emotionally, sentimentally. We have tried in subtle ways to absolve ourselves of any deep responsibility for the condition of the human family. We perceive ourselves, or our small identity groups, as truly sincere and peace-loving, and we ascribe to outsiders, to those apart, to power-hungry villains, responsibility for aggression and wars.
Machines | Opportunity | Time | Will | Learn |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The parents own everything and people do not have anything, it is the masterpiece of reason and justice. I cannot find anything as extraordinary as the Padres, who are fighting here against the king of Spain and Portugal, and that here in Europe confess those same kings kill Spanish here, and in Madrid send them to heaven: is something portentous
Good | Opportunity |
Two big questions present themselves to every parent in one form or another: "What kind of human being do I want my child to become?" and "How can I go about making that happen?"
Means | Opportunity | Crisis |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
My mind turned by anxiety, or other cause, from its scrutiny of blank paper, is like a lost child–wandering the house, sitting on the bottom step to cry.
Belief | Body | Courage | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Opportunity | Past | Reality | Talking | Will | World |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I understand Nature’s game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action—men, we assume, who don’t think. Still, there’s no harm in putting a full stop to one’s disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.
Belief | Body | Children | Courage | Determination | Effort | Freedom | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Men | Need | Opportunity | Past | Poverty | Power | Reality | Talking | Will | World | Worth |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucent'--and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present; that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.
Decision | Dignity | Freedom | Opportunity |
He should put in all efforts to increase his wealth and grain. He should only speak well about others. The person who does all these things always remains untouched by misery and dwells in happiness and peace.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Achievement | Change | Guilt | Opportunity | Optimism | Reason | Suffering | Tragedy |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.
Death | Enjoyment | Existence | Fate | Fulfillment | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Fate |