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 |
We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
Experience | Order | Responsibility | Sense | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal.
Family | Nothing | Responsibility |
The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships —i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences.
Humility | Individual | People | Politics | Responsibility |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer....The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
Disobedience | Obedience | Responsibility | Society | Society |
The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist.
Body | Knowledge | Men | Nature | Responsibility | Understand |
Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming
When you are still plowing fields ahead, make a point of being open-minded, and there will be no murmuring among others. After your life is over, its blessings will flow for a long time, giving contentment to people in their thoughts.
Sincerity is no test of truth - no evidence of correctness of conduct. - You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?
Guilt | Responsibility |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
[Growing up] is especially difficult to achieve for a child whose parents do not take him seriously; that is, who do not expect proper behavior from him, do not discipline him, and finally, do not respect him enough to tell him the truth.
Action | Freedom | Responsibility | Self |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Ideas are malleable and unstable; they not only can be misused, they invite misuse---and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is by this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpful idea is changed into robot dogma that is deadly. The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea, but with the people who are attracted to it, until the last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogmas by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.
Consequences | Evolution | Martyrs | Responsibility | Society | Society |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
I'm looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.
Consequences | Evolution | Martyrs | Responsibility | Society | Society |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring.
Choice | Consequences | Freedom | Responsibility | Surrender | Time | Will | Learn |
Be sad, good brothers, for, by my faith, it very well becomes you: sorrow so royally in you appears, that I will deeply put the fashion on.
What we did not imagine was a Web of people, but a Web of documents.
Care | Future | Responsibility | World |
William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet
The term nature is used sometimes in a wider, sometimes in a narrower extension. When employed in its most extensive meaning, it embraces the two worlds of mind and matter. When employed in its most restricted signification, it is a synonyme for the latter only, and is then used in contradistinction to the former.
Man | Morality | Personality | Responsibility |
When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. ... His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast...
Care | Decision | Order | Responsibility |