This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
While the theory of evolution spells out how the changes take place, any concept of a cosmic plan would specify why.
David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm
Quantum theory requires us to give up the idea that the electron, or any other object, has, by itself, any intrinsic properties at all.
Object |
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
No theory is good except on condition that one use it to go beyond.
Good |
Few things are impossible to diligence and skill... Great works are performed, not by strength, but perseverance.
Diligence | Perseverance | Skill | Strength |
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
Quantum theory has abolished the notion of fundamentally separated objects... It has come to see the universe as an interconnected web of physical and mental relations whose parts are only defined through their connections to the whole.
Universe |
I observe the physician with the same diligence as the disease.
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.
Citizenship | Freedom | Good | Justice | Reason | Right | Rights | Society | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Society | Loss |
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life.
Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
All things are attained by diligence and toil.
The dispute between the theory of a predestined future and the theory of a free future is an endless dispute. This is so because both theories are too literal, too rigid, too material, and the one excludes the other... The opposites are both equally wrong because the truth lies in the unification of these two opposite understandings into one whole. At any given moment all the future of the world is predestined and existing - provided no new factor comes in. And a new factor can only come in from the side of consciousness and the will resulting from it.
Consciousness | Dispute | Future | Theories | Truth | Will | World | Wrong |
I have a theory of power: That if it's going to be responsible, it has to have something to lose.
Power |