This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mankind is a creature of space, a space race living on a planet in orbit around a star, as others are also doing. Mankind is not unique, as he fondly imagines. He is merely a part of the vast interstellar human family bred and nurtured by us through the eons of time on planets in different solar systems throughout the galaxy.
Of all exercises there are none of so much importance, or so immediately our concern, as those which let us into the knowledge of our own nature. Others may exercise the understanding or amuse the imagination; but these only can improve the heart and form the human mind to wisdom.
Character | Heart | Imagination | Knowledge | Mind | Nature | Understanding | Wisdom |
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Most forms of human creativity have one aspect n common: the attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions, experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some meaning and value to our existence... The crisis of our time in the Western world is that the search for meaning has become meaningless for many of us.
Character | Creativity | Emotions | Existence | Meaning | Search | Sense | Time | World | Crisis | Value |
Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance.
Character | Life | Life | Opportunity | Perseverance | Success | Talent |
That one who does not get fun and enjoyment out of every day in which he lives, needs to reorganize his life. And the sooner the better, for pure enjoyment throughout life has more to do with one's happiness and efficiency than almost any other single element.
Better | Day | Efficiency | Enjoyment | Fun | Life | Life | Wisdom | Happiness |
Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature.
Character | Desire | Happy | Human nature | Justice | Man | Nature | Reason | Religion | Right | Self | Self-interest | Teach | Happiness |
The physical loss is not sufficient for mourning. Purely on a physical level what would a person gain if he lived many more years? What is the ultimate gain in devouring hundreds more chickens and thousands more loaves of bread? What is the overall difference if the deceased left all this to others? The Torah obligates us to mourn to emphasize the loss of the true value of life; which is the spiritual elevation a person could have gained if he were still alive. The Almighty placed him on this earth for this purpose. The person’s death should remind the mourners to fill their lives with the spiritual growth that they are capable of.
Character | Death | Earth | Growth | Life | Life | Mourn | Mourning | Purpose | Purpose | Loss | Torah | Value |
If you have a positive attitude towards the events of your life, even though to an outside observer your life might seem full of suffering, you nevertheless will live a happy life. What to others might seem misfortunes, you will view as opportunities for spiritual growth.
Character | Events | Growth | Happy | Life | Life | Suffering | Will |
In this life we get only those things for which we hunt, for which we strive, and for which we are willing to sacrifice. It is better to aim for something that you want - even though you miss it - than to get something that you didn't aim to get, and which you don't want! If we look long enough for what we want in life we are almost sure to find it, no matter what that objective may be.
The goal of our intellectual efforts cannot be a static, polished possession; it can only be further, more successful efforts of the same general kind. In science as in life it is the process, not the terminus, that should concern us - if we are wise.
Have I met the hour patiently, without fear, at the portal? Now is my name called, of the lip of my love has spoken: Do I mistake you, O divine Signaler? is it after all some other soul that is hailed. My self is my answer: there’s that in my heart responds, meeting the call with equal voice, establishing forever the unspeakable bond! Bond that does not bind - bond that frees - bond that discovers and bestows. Look! I am flushed with inexhaustible possessions! The old measures vanish, I am expanded to infinite sweep... Before birth, seeing birth, after life seeing life!... This minute grown infinite, the far worlds spread before me, the endless drift of soul...
Birth | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mistake | Possessions | Self | Soul | Old |
Every human being has four hungers; the hunger of the loins, the hunger of the belly, the hunger of the mind, the hunger of the soul. You can get by a long time on the loins and the belly, but there is a good deal of evidence that even the meanest men eventually crave something for the mind and soul.
Character | Evidence | Good | Hunger | Men | Mind | Soul | Time |