This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Smaller than the hundredth part of a tip of hair, the Soul of the living being is capable of infinity. Male is he not nor female nor neuter, but is joined with whatever body he takes as his own.
A body is like lightning, gone in a moment, back to Nothingness. As spring flowers are dead in the fall. Forget about this growing and dying, it is all irrelevant. Life’s motions are like dew on the grass.
Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL
I do not understand how people declare themselves to be believers in God, and at the same time think that God has handed over to a little body of man all truth, and that they are guardians of the rest of humanity.
Body | God | Humanity | Little | Man | People | Rest | Time | Truth | God | Think | Understand |
If by prayer I mean the power of words to persuade God to do things, then prayer is futile and foolish. One might utter the words of the most devout prayer that was ever breathed and yet not be praying at all. It is the attitude of the personality which is the prayer, not the words.
Computational irreducibility tends to make infinite questions undecidable. The presence of universality implies that there must at some level be computational irreducibility… This means that today’s mathematics will be viewed as small and surprisingly uncharacteristic sample of what is possible. If a system is computationally irreducible this means that there is in effect a tangible separation between the underlying rules for the system and its overall behavior associated with the irreducible amount of computational work needed to go from one to the other. And it is this separation that the basic origin of the apparent freedom we see in all sorts of system lie – whether those systems are abstract cellular automata or actual living brains.
Abstract | Behavior | Freedom | Mathematics | Means | System | Will | Work |
Be generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded in thy speech. Be a lamp unto those who walk in darkness, and a home to the stranger. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the erring. Be a breath of life to the body of humankind, a dew to the soil of the human heart, and a fruit upon the tree of humility.
Adversity | Body | Darkness | Heart | Humility | Judgment | Life | Life | Light | Prosperity | Speech |
The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight.
Individual | Life | Life | Man | Means | Revolution | Spirit |
Many Americans draw the boundaries of their self-interest very narrowly. Our culture's emphasis on individualism and competition reinforces an attitude of isolation and impotence toward global problems.
Competition | Culture | Global | Isolation | Problems | Self | Self-interest |
Replacing religious institutions that are thousands of years old and hostile to reason with a reason-based belief system would transform society in a positive way more than any mere political change or economic-policy change ever could.
Belief | Change | Policy | Reason | Society | System | Society | Old |
In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people, not the media or the financial system or megacorporations or the two political parties, who have the power to create change.
Change | Government | People | Power | System |
Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations.
Commitment | Democracy | Devotion | Distrust | Evil | Good | History | Law | Nations | Openness | People | Power | Rule | System |
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.