This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The university cannot be an ivory tower, far away from the society, removed from the practical accomplishments of the Revolution. If such an attitude is maintained, the university will continue giving our society lawyers that we do not need.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
What is to take the place of the soul and life-destroying metaphysics inherited from the nineteenth century? The task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction… Our task – and the task of all education – is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was acquired by its ancestors.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
If our intellectual leaders treat work as nothing but a necessary evil soon to be abolished as far as the majority is concerned, the urge to minimize it right away is hardly a surprising reaction, and the problem of motivation becomes insoluble.
Envy | Greed | Inevitable | Man | Nothing | Power | Problems |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Development does not start with goods; it starts with people and their education, organization, and discipline. Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped, potential.
Dignity |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
We are, I believe, at the moment in grave danger of missing the 'path to perfection'.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
When we move from small-scale to medium-scale, the connection between ownership and work already becomes attenuated; private enterprise tends to become impersonal and also a significant social factor in the locality; it may even assume more than local significance.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Thus the same statement that guarantees that God exists and that his most suitable name is He Who Is, also reveals to us the perfect simplicity of the divine essence. And indeed, God did not say: I am this or that, but simply I Am. I am what? I am ‘I Am.’ So, more than ever, the statement of Exodus seems to soar above in a kind of empty space, where the attraction of the weight of philosophy can no longer be felt. The work of reason is good, healthy, and important, for it proves that, left to itself, philosophy can establish with certitude the existence of the primary being whom everyone calls God. But a single word of the sacred text at once puts us in personal relations with him. We say his name, and by the simple fact of saying it, it teaches us the simplicity of the divine essence.
Further, laws and public transactions, together with everything that deserved the attention of mankind, were multiplied to such a degree, that the memory grew too weak for so heavy a burden; and human societies increased in such a manner, that the promulgation of the laws could not, without difficulty, reach the ears of every individual.
We see plainly what were the subjects of the earliest poems. At the first institution of societies, mankind could not as yet employ themselves in matters of amusement; so that the wants which obliged them to unite, at the fame time confined their views to whatever might be useful or necessary to them. Therefore poetry and music were cultivated merely with a design to promote the knowledge of religion and laws, or to preserve the memory of great men, and of the services which they had done to society.
Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the finished piece transcends the personal. All writers great and small must sometimes have felt that they have become part of what they wrote even more than it still remains a part of them.
Language was a long time without having any other words than the names which had been given to sensible objects, such as these, tree, fruit, water, fire, and others, which they had more frequent occasion to mention.
Distinguish | Fear | Ideas | Metaphysics | Reason |
Hence arises a perception which represents them to us as distant and limited; and which consequently implies the idea of some extension.
Without doubt it is natural to include that love long what we love so much.
Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure.
Ministry is a very confronting service. It does not allow people to live with illusions of immortality and wholeness. It keeps reminding others that they are mortal and broken, but also that with the recognition of this condition, liberation starts.
Experience | Friendship |