This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To indoctrinate the child with the prevailing world-view of the society and class in which he has been born, to enforce conformity in later life by the thunders of the priest and by the sword of the magistrate has been “the wisdom of our ancestor” at every stage in their progress from savagery to civilization.
Civilization | Conformity | Life | Life | Progress | Society | Wisdom | World | Society | Child |
Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL
It is easy to be honest enough not to be hanged. To be really honest means to subdue one’s prepossessions, ideals - stating things fairly, not humoring your argument - doing justice to your enemies... making confession whether you can afford it or not; refusing unmerited praise; looking painful truths in the face.
Argument | Enough | Ideals | Justice | Means | Praise | Truths |
Social change rarely comes through the efforts of the disenfranchised. The middle class creates social revolutions.
Change |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
A man following Christ’s teaching is like a man carrying a lantern before him at the end of a pole. The light is ever before him, and ever impels him to follow it, by continually lighting up fresh ground and attracting him onward.
Kenneth Eble, fully Kenneth Eugene Eble
If there is no place for pleasure in teaching, surely our Teaching has failed us altogether.
Pleasure |
There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch.
Find meaning not in possessions or positions, but in personal commitments to ideals bigger than our own needs. And the ideals that seem to consistently provide this kind of meaning are ideals of service-of acting for the common good and overcoming whatever risks and obstacles may lie in the way.
Good | Ideals | Meaning | Possessions | Service |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Bad teaching is teaching which presents an endless procession of meaningless signs, words and rules, and fails to arouse the imagination.
Imagination | Words |
A significant life - one that is more than just happy or meaningful - requires dedication to ends that we choose because they exceed the goal of personal well-being. We attain and feel our significance in the world when we create, and act for, ideals that may originate in self-interest, but ultimately benefit others.
Dedication | Ends | Happy | Ideals | Life | Life | Self | Self-interest | World |
We often use the word "meaning" in relation to personal feelings and emotional significance. It then reveals and sometimes declares our highest values. It manifests ideals that we cherish and pursue.
We are by nature thinking beings, and if we cannot escape anxiety about the inherent structure of our thought processes, how can we hope to creative purposive ideals that are congruent with reality instead of deflecting us from it?
Anxiety | Anxiety | Hope | Ideals | Nature | Reality | Thinking | Thought | Thought |
Despite all the questions raised by our meandering minds, we are in our right place, doing exactly what we need to be doing, at exactly the right time. Because life is a school, we are always I the class that we have chosen to learn the lessons we need to master. Sometimes it is fun, and sometimes we have to work at it a bit, but it is always appropriate.