This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Temporality and uninterruptedness express the relation of existence to time, a passive relation. What distinguishes organic from inorganic existence is the fact that the plant or the animal stands in an active and defensive relation to temporality… Life, we know from biology, is not a passive state of indifference, and inertia. The essence of life is intense care and concern.
Care | Existence | Indifference | Life | Life | Organic | Time |
It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher
The contemplation of the pious is the immediate consciousness of the universal existence of all finite things, in and through the Infinite, and of all temporal things in and through the Eternal.
Consciousness | Contemplation | Eternal | Existence | Pious | Contemplation |
As long as we look at our own existence as meaningless, there is no point whatevr in desiring to effect anything in the world.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.
This is the meaning of life - continuously to add something we haven’t know so far. That, anyway, is the meaning of all existing things. Existence is built upon the idea of the creative - that there is always something unknown to be discovered, which causes and motivates new perception, new studies, the energy to go on.
The meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. But one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual. The purpose of existence is that we human beings, all nations and the whole of humanity, should constantly progress toward perfection. If we do this, our finite spirit will be in harmony with the infinite.
Events | Existence | Harmony | Humanity | Meaning | Nations | Perfection | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Will | World |
Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
If choice is real, if there really are alternatives, it follows that in choosing between them we are exhibiting our power as real agents, real causes and initiators of new departures in the flow of cosmic change, we thereby prove the existence of free causes.
Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West
Once you accept the existence of God - however you define him, however you explain your relationship to him - then you are caught forever with his presence in the center of all things.
Existence | God | Relationship | God |