This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel
By the time a baby born today in the U.S. reaches age 75, (s)he will have used on average: 4,000 barrels of oil, 54,000 pounds of plant matter, 64,000 pounds of animal products, and 43 million gallons of water – and will have produced over 3 million pounds of liquid wastes and 1,500 tons of solid wastes.
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.
Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
In business, the chief focus is on profitability. Government, by contrast, has no simple bottom line but rather a vast array of interests and priorities, many of which exist in a state of tension or conflict. For that reason, decision making in government is vastly more complex.
Business | Contrast | Decision | Focus | Government | Reason | Government |
The soul cannot be understood as an aggregate of many parts, for everywhere it is apprehended as being other than the body, being that which measures and of one form. It is that which says in the body, `I know this.’
No matter how many times you have wronged or hurt by others, all it takes is one act of kindness to make you believe in the goodness that exists in the world.
Isn't it surprising how many things, if not said immediately, seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?
Worth |
Patterns and structure. Everywhere we look we see them. What appears random and chaotic also has order. And on Earth much of the order is linked to interrelationships that drive constant change. Cycles and rhythms. Pulses and flows. Changes in magnetic fields. Continental plates moving. Water cycles. Seasons changing. Life and death. Process and connection. Nature flows through webs of structure and shifting time: from ocean to cloud to rain to river to ocean. Natural rhythms.
Change | Death | Earth | Life | Life | Nature | Order | Time |
Meditation, because it is free of dogma, of historical commitments and narrow prejudices, because it is practiced for the most part silently and thereby secretly, and because it is practiced by some members of all religions - meditation is a channel for seekers of all faiths or no faith, a river into which many streams can freely flow.
Dogma | Faith | Meditation |
History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Many people think it impossible for guerillas to exist for long in the enemy’s rear. Such a belief reveals lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water and the latter to the fish who inhabits it.
Belief | Enemy | People | Relationship | Think |
Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill.
Body | Desire | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Nature | Peace | People | Power | Practice | Quiet | Receive | Self | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wit | Following | Thought |
Teresa of Avila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.
Care | Death | Eternal | Glory | Life | Life | Nothing | Soul | Will |