This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.
Morality is not properly the doctrine how we make ourselves happy, but how we make ourselves worthy of happiness.
It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is despair.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
We must not reject a proven doctrine because it is opposed to some isolated opinion of this or that great authority... No man must surrender his private judgment. The eyes are directed forwards, not backwards.
Authority | Doctrine | Judgment | Man | Opinion | Surrender |
The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repulsion; if the force, so the limitation. Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength. "It is in the world, and the world was made by it." Justice is not postponed. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all parts of life. The dice of God are always loaded.
Balance | Doctrine | Equity | Evil | Force | God | Good | History | Inspiration | Justice | Law | Life | Life | Omnipresence | Sentiment | Soul | Strength | Universe | World | God | Value |
The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find the animal-cule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction that take hold on eternity – all find room to consist in the small creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb.
Appetite | Doctrine | Eternity | God | Life | Life | Little | Omnipresence | Taste | World | God |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrine of the weak.
Doctrine |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Religious doctrine were determined not by the logic of a few but by the needs of the many; they were a frame of belief within which the common man, inclined by nature to a hundred unsocial actions, could be formed in to a being sufficiently disciplined and self-controlled to make society and civilization possible.
Belief | Civilization | Doctrine | Logic | Man | Nature | Self | Society | Society |
David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"
The essential ingredient of democracy is not doctrine but intelligence, not authority but reason, not cynicism but faith in men, faith in God. Our strength lies in the fearless pursuit of truth by the minds of men who are free.
Authority | Cynicism | Democracy | Doctrine | Faith | God | Intelligence | Men | Reason | Strength | Truth |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way. Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind... Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind.
Doctrine | Experience | God | Mystical | God |
What is Communism? Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. What is the proletariat? The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor.
Doctrine | Existence | Labor | Life | Life | Proletariat | Society | Society |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The doctrine of equality!... But there exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice... ‘Equality for equals, inequality for unequals’ - that would be the true voice of justice: and, what follows from it, ‘Never make equal what is unequal’.
Doctrine | Inequality | Justice |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
As the essence of Matter is Gravity, so, on the other hand, we may affirm that the substance, the essence of Spirit is Freedom. All will readily assent to the doctrine that Spirit, among other properties, is also endowed with Freedom; but philosophy teaches that all the qualities of Spirit exist only through Freedom; that all are but means for attaining Freedom; that all seek and produce this and this alone.
I am content to be one of the multitude of Christians who do not care much about the doctrine of the Trinity or the historical truth of the gospels. Both as a scientist and as a religious person, I am accustomed to living with uncertainty. Science is exciting because it is full of unsolved mysteries, and religion is exciting for the same reason. The greatest unsolved mysteries are the mysteries of our existence as conscious beings in a small corner of a vast universe.
George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
Doctrine | Future | Government | Opposition | Order | Policy | Purpose | Purpose | Will | World | Government |
A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle.
The doctrine of the material efficacy of prayer reduces the Creator to a cosmic bellhop of a not very bright or reliable kind.
In point of fact there are a certain number of values and of forces which are of decisive importance in our world civilization: the primacy of production, the continual growth of the power of the State and the formation of the National State, the autonomous development of technics, etc. These, among others — far more than the ownership of the means of production or any totalitarian doctrine — are the constitutive elements of the modern world. So long as these elements continue to be taken for granted, the world is standing still.