This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.
Ability | Absurd | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Sensibility |
The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.
The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.
Absence | Experience | Meaning | Absurdity |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The world is in balance… To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
Flexibility | Meaning | Precision | Precision | Flexibility |
Whenever logical processes of thought are employed— that is, whenever thought for a time runs along an accepted groove— there is an opportunity for the machine. Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine.
Absolute | Chance | Energy | Guidance | Meaning | Phenomena | Property | Science | Space | Time | Universe | Wonder | Guidance |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The science project is to prevent the difficulties of enforcement.
Ridicule |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
Man | Meaning | Sound | Understanding |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
The simple definition of globalization is the interweaving of markets, technology, information systems, and telecommunications networks in a way that is shrinking the world from a size medium to a size small. It began decades ago, but accelerated dramatically over the past 10 years, as the price of computing power fell and the world became an ever-more densely interconnected place. People resist this shift — see, for example, the G8 protests of 2001 (one of the bloodiest uprisings in recent European history) or the recent rioting in Pittsburgh at this year’s G20 conference—because they think it primarily benefits big business elites to the detriment of everyone else. But globalization didn’t ruin the world—it just flattened it. And on balance that can benefit everyone, especially the poor. Globalization has pulled millions of people out of poverty in India and China, and multiplied the size of the global middle class. It has raised the global standard of living faster than that at any other time in the history of the world, and it is supporting astounding growth. All world economic activity was valued at $7 trillion in 1950. That’s equal to how much growth took place over just the past decade, even including the recent downturn. Whatever people’s fears of change, globalization is here to stay—and, if properly managed, it will be a good thing.
Ability | Chance | Friend | Good | Important | Lesson | Listening | Meaning | News | People | Question | Respect | Talking | Will | World | Respect |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
A writer's first obligation is not to the many-bellied beast but to the many-tongued beast, not to Society, but to Language. Everyone has a stake in the husbandry of Society, but Language is the writer's special charge. A grandiose animal it is, too. If it weren't for Language there wouldn't be Society.
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
Some associations may revivify it enough to make it flash, after a long oblivion, into consciousness.
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions which originate in the mind itself.
Meaning | Understanding | Intellect |
But psychology is passing into a less simple phase. Within a few years what one may call a microscopic psychology has arisen in Germany, carried on by experimental methods, asking of course every moment for introspective data, but eliminating their uncertainty by operating on a large scale and taking statistical means. This method taxes patience to the utmost, and could hardly have arisen in a country whose natives could be bored. Such Germans as Weber, Fechner, Vierordt, and Wundt obviously cannot ; and their success has brought into the field an array of younger experimental psychologists, bent on studying the elements of the mental life, dissecting them out from the gross results in which they are embedded, and as far as possible reducing them to quantitative scales. The simple and open method of attack having done what it can, the method of patience, starving out, and harassing to death is tried ; the Mind must submit to a regular siege, in which minute advantages gained night and day by the forces that hem her in must sum themselves up at last into her overthrow. There is little of the grand style about these new prism, pendulum, and chronograph-philosophers. They mean business, not chivalry. What generous divination, and that superiority in virtue which was thought by Cicero to give a man the best insight into nature, have failed to do, their spying and scraping, their deadly tenacity and almost diabolic cunning, will doubtless someday bring about.
Conversation | Criticism | Meaning | Power | Prayer | Sense | Soul |
Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
Absolute | Body | Conscience | Consciousness | Education | Energy | God | Heaven | Life | Life | Meaning | Miracles | Present | Religion | Science | World | God | Think |