This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Often lack of wisdom can result in deeds lacking compassion. The philosopher Karl Popper was asked in an interview if he believed in evil. No, he answered, but I believe in stupidity. His reply struck me as remarkably Buddhist: often in Buddhist teachings, the wise are associated with righteousness and the foolish or ignorant with evil-doing. As sweet as honey is an evil deed, so thinks the fool... Lack of wisdom blinds men to attitudes and actions that deny the basic humanity that should unite all peoples, regardless of race, language, creed or class. Once set on a course which emphasizes differences and exacerbates conflict, there is little room left for compassion. Wisdom can thus be seen as important not just for making compassion effective, but for generating compassion itself.
Compassion | Creed | Deeds | Evil | Humanity | Important | Little | Men | Righteousness | Wisdom | Wise | Deeds |
The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man's vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.
Belief | Capacity | Compassion | Courage | Endurance | Humanity | Individual | Intelligence | Justice | Man | Power | Principles | Responsibility | Self-improvement | Sense | Vision | Will | World |
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
The media have just buried the last yuppie, a pathetic creature who had not heard the news that the great pendulum of public consciousness has just swung from Greed to Compassion and from Tex-Mex to meatballs.
Compassion | Consciousness | Greed | News | Public |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
True religion is not what men see and admire; it is what God sees and loves… the sanctity which shrinks from the approach of evil; the humility which lies low at the feet of the Redeemer, and washes them with tears; the love which welcomes every sacrifice; the cheerful consecration of all the powers of the soul; the worship which, rising above all outward forms, ascends to God in the sweetest, dearest communion--a worship often too deep for utterance, and then which the highest heaven knows nothing more sublime.
Consecration | God | Heaven | Humility | Love | Men | Nothing | Religion | Worship | God |
Our task is to widen our circle of compassion to include all living beings and all of nature.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange
Ours is but a borrowed existence, freely given us by God, and He keeps us in existence because indeed He wills it so. Ours is but a goodness in which there is so much infirmity and even degradation; there is so much error in our knowledge. This thought, while serving to make us humble, brings home to us by contrast the infinite majesty of God. And then if it is a question of others and no longer of ourselves, if we have suffered disillusionment about our neighbor whom we had believed to be better and wiser, let us remember that he too has suffered disillusionment about us; let us remember that he too is perhaps better than we are, and that whatever is our own as coming from ourselves-our deficiencies and failings—is inferior to everything our neighbor has from God. This is the foundation of humility in our relations with others. Lastly, we must admit that the disillusionments we ourselves experience, or which others experience through us, in view of the radical imperfection of the creature, are permitted that we may aspire more ardently to a knowledge and love of Him who is the truth and the life, whom we shall some day see as He sees Himself. We shall then understand the meaning of those words of St.Catherine of Siena: “The living, practical knowledge of our own wretchedness and the knowledge of God’s majesty are inseparable in their increase. They are like the lowest and highest points on a circle that is ever expanding.
Better | Contrast | Day | Disillusionment | Error | Existence | Experience | Humility | Imperfection | Knowledge | Love | Meaning | Question | Truth | Wills | Words | Understand |
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
Being humble does not mean you must put yourself in a state of constricted consciousness. Constantly ask God to bring you to true humility and to have faith in yourself. Some Tzaddikim suffer opposition only because they do not have faith in themselves!
Faith | God | Humility | Opposition | God |
I read your categories of humanism with interest. They seem to me to be excellent and will be useful to me. As for myself, I do not know exactly where I fit. I do not know the realities of the cosmos. I only know that man with his hopes and aspirations, his capacity to sacrifice for an ideal is part of it. He uses the abilities with which he is endowed not only to maintain life but to find some meaning for it. His efforts to discover meaning ends in mystery. His attempt through the use of reason to add to his knowledge of the cosmos has brought a vast increase in that knowledge beyond the frontiers of which, however, lies mystery. To push out this frontier, to penetrate the mystery is his greatest challenge. I find that contemplation of the mystery brings that humility which is one of the virtues taught by religion. For me the aspirations (part of the cosmos) of men suggest an essence or being greater than man, worship of whom gives added strength for dealing with the vicissitudes of life.
Capacity | Contemplation | Ends | Humility | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Men | Mystery | Reason | Sacrifice | Strength | Will | Worship | Vicissitudes | Contemplation |
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist.
Humility | Impression | Means | Patience |
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
The current vogue for poisons has failed utterly to take into account these most fundamental considerations. As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life a fabric on the one hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough and resilient, and capable of striking back in unexpected ways. These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task no high-minded orientation, no humility before the vast forces with which they tamper.
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion - and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.
Compassion | Life | Life | Love | Work |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
One need not fear anything if one has received the grace of God. It is rather easy for a child to stumble if he holds his father's hand; but there can be no such fear if the father holds the child's hand. A man does not have to suffer any more if God, in His grace, removes his doubts and reveals Himself to him. But this grace descends upon him only after he has prayed to God with intense yearning of heart and practiced spiritual discipline. The mother feels compassion for her child when she sees him running about breathlessly. She has been hiding herself; now she appears before the child.
Compassion | Father | Fear | God | Grace | Heart | Man | Mother | Need | God | Child |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
When one has love for God, one doesn't feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. One retains only compassion for them.
Compassion | Love |
Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
We learn from here the humility of the Holy One, Blessed is He. Since man is in the likeness of the angels, and they would be jealous of him, for this reason, He consulted them.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.
Scientists are sometimes suspected of arrogance. Carl Sagan commends to us by contrast the humility of the Roman Catholic Church which, as early as 1992, was ready to grant a pardon to Galileo and admit publicly that the Earth does indeed revolve around the Sun. We must hope that this outspoken magnanimity will not cause any offence or hurt to the supreme religious authority of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdel-Aziz Ibn Baaz who, according to Sagan, in 1993 issued an edict, or fatwa, declaring that the world is flat. Anyone of the round persuasion does not believe in God and should be punished. Arrogance? Scientists are amateurs in arrogance.
Authority | Cause | Church | Contrast | Earth | God | Hope | Humility | Magnanimity | Pardon | Persuasion | Will | World | God |
The first step to becoming a more peaceful person is to have the humility to admit that, in most cases, you're creating your own emergencies. Life will usually go on if things don't go according to plan. It's helpful to keep reminding yourself and repeating the sentence, Life isn't an emergency.