This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I believe that the greater part of man’s existence is in the spirit realm, the worlds of the unseen and eternal. It is the larger and purer part of life that makes life full and whole and makes man “one” with all things.... Man has lost his connection to that world and thus his communication and power. This world of spirit cannot be understood through the words and concepts of man, nor can it be understood by logical thought. It can only be entered through the heart and pure mind.
Eternal | Existence | Heart | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Power | Spirit | Thought | Words | World |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
What then you do call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.
Existence | Power | Revelation | Soul | Thinking |
The more we can squeeze out of nature by invention and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but thinks which lord it over us.
Existence | Invention | Lord | Nature | Organization |
From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human.
Brotherhood | Despise | Earth | Existence | Force | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Religion | Reverence | Right | Rights | Safe | Spirit | World | Friends |
People can only exhibit freedom in proportion to their comprehension of existence and grander realities. Only through an expanded knowledge, wisdom and the understanding of greater truths, do people have a greater capacity to express their freedom.
Capacity | Existence | Freedom | Knowledge | People | Understanding | Wisdom |
Émile Durkheim, fully David Émile Durkheim
A mind that questions everything, unless strong enough to bear the weight of its ignorance, risks questioning itself and being engulfed in doubt. If it cannot discover the claims to existence of the objects of its questioning -- and it would be miraculous if it so soon succeeded in solving so many mysteries -- it will deny them all reality, the mere formulation of the problem already implying an inclination to negative solutions. But in so doing it will become void of all positive content and, finding nothing which offers it resistance, will launch itself perforce into the emptiness of inner revere.
Doubt | Enough | Existence | Ignorance | Inclination | Mind | Nothing | Reality | Will |
The individual who has to justify his existence by his own efforts is in eternal bondage to himself.
Eternal | Existence | Individual | Justify |
Ordinarily when we talk about the human as the advanced product of evolution and the mind as being the most advanced product of evolution, there is an implication that we are advanced out of and away from the structure of the exterior world in which we have evolved, as if a separate product had been packaged, wrapped up, and delivered from a production line. The view I am presenting proposes a mechanism more and more interlocked with the totality of the exterior. This mechanism has no separate existence at all, being in a thousand ways united with and continuously interacting with the whole exterior domain. In fact there is no exterior red object with a tremendous mind linked to it by only a ray of light. The red object is a composite product of matter and mechanism evolved in permanent association with a most elaborate interlock. There is no tremor in what we call the "outside world" that is not locked by a thousand chains and gossamers to inner structures that vibrate and move with it and are a part of it. The reason for the painfulness of all philosophy is that in the past, in its necessary ignorance of the unbelievable domains of partnership that have evolved in the relationship between ourselves and the world around us, it dealt with what indeed have been a tragic separation and isolation. Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist.
Association | Evolution | Existence | Ignorance | Meaning | Mind | Object | Philosophy | Question | Reason | Relationship | World | Association |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.
Existence | Love | Non-existence | Question | Reward |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve.
Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light.
Danger | Dignity | Enemy | Evil | Existence | Humanity | Individuality | Knowledge | Nature | Danger |
"The soul of man is a lamp of G‑d" (Proverbs 20:27). Just like the flame of the lamp strains upwards, seeking to tear free of the wick and rise heavenward - though this would spell its own demise - so, too, does the G‑dly soul in man constantly strive to tear free of the body and the material existence and be nullified within its source in G‑d.
Akon said to Elizabeth: “Mind forces, spiritual strength, soul attainment and thoughts are all made up of different speeds in the wave-length of light, or microatoms. Electricity is microatoms of light while sound and colour occur when the microatoms have different speeds, and when micro-atoms are stopped, they create heat. Light is an intelligent energy which can be thought into existence and substance. The pattern of the microatoms of light changes with changing thoughts, when one achieves the formula for the harmonic vibration of light. The key to all life and the Universe lies in the harmonic interaction of light. A mathematical formula for all transportation lies in the vibratory frequencies of light harmonic, with anti-gravity waves and time waves, which are simply the frequency rate between each pulse of the spiral of light.
Attainment | Energy | Existence | Life | Life | Light | Soul | Sound | Thought | Time | Universe | Thought |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
When a person feels he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make some sense of it in terms of the lives of his children. But one is bound to fail oneself and one's children. The former because the problem of existence can only be solved by each one only for himself, and not by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualities which one needs to guide the children in their own search for an answer.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation of existence is not consumption; a world in which "man" is the end, first and last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions.
Existence | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Strength | World |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"To be alive" is a dynamic, not a static, concept. Existence and the unfolding of the specific powers of an organism are one and the same. All organisms have an inherent tendency to actualize their specific potentialities. The aim of man's life, therefore, is to be understood as the unfolding of his powers according to the laws of nature.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers.