This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
Imagination | Knowledge |
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because while mind in this sense is impassable, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
Eternal | Individual | Knowing | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Object | Present | Sense | Time | Universe |
The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.
The search for truth is one way hard, and in another way easy. For it is evident that no one can master it fully, nor yet miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled, there arises a certain grandeur.
Soul is actuality in the sense in which knowledge is so, for the presence of the soul is compatible both with sleep and with waking, and waking is analogous to the exercise of knowledge… the soul is the first actualization of a natural body potentially having life.
He is wise who knows the sources of knowledge - who knows who has written and where it is to be found.
A young man is not a proper hearer of lectures on political science; for he is inexperienced in the actions that occur in life, but its discussions start from these and are about these; and further, since he tends to follow his passions, his study will be vain and unprofitable, because the end aimed at is not knowledge but action. And it makes no difference whether he is young in years or youthful in character; the defect does not depend on time, but on his living, and pursuing each successive object, as passion directs. For to such persons, as to the incontinent, knowledge brings no profit; but to those who desire and act in accordance with a rational principle knowledge about such matters will be of great benefit.
Action | Character | Desire | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Object | Passion | Science | Study | Time | Will |
According to the true nature of things, everyone has all the sufferings of the world as his own; indeed, he has to look upon all merely possible sufferings as actual for him, so long as he is the firm and constant will-to-live, in other words, affirms life with all his strength. For the knowledge that sees through the principium individuationis, a happy life in time, given by chance or won from it by shrewdness, amid the sufferings of innumerable others, is only a beggar’s dream, in which he is a king, but from which he must awake, in order to realize that only a fleeting illusion had separated him from the suffering of his life.
Chance | Happy | Illusion | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Order | Strength | Suffering | Time | Will | Words | World |
Our eyes see only by permission of the mind... Truly our minds can be barriers, not because of the knowledge they acquire, but because of the intellectual habit of interpreting the unknown in terms of the known. The spiritual transcendent and the mind not only suffers defeat in trying to interpret it, but also blocks reception of the formless Real
The human mind turned downwards takes cognizance of the world reported to it by the senses; turned upwards it receives intuitional knowledge and directions from pure intelligence, which is its source and essence... The mind finds itself not merely cognizing and arranging the world reported by the senses but striving to rule it and in fact ruled by it. This is a cruel paradox, for by desiring one thing and fearing another the pseudo-self or ego subordinates itself to the senses and the world they report. Thus it comes to be torn between conflicting passions and subject to the tyranny of events.
Ego | Events | Intelligence | Knowledge | Mind | Paradox | Rule | Self | Tyranny | World |
A mirror is of no use to the blind man, nor knowledge to a man without discernment.
Discernment | Knowledge | Man |
Exaggeration is a prodigality of the judgment which shows the narrowness of one's knowledge or one's taste.
Exaggeration | Judgment | Knowledge | Prodigality | Taste |
Bahya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda NULL
The ultimate result of your knowledge of God should be the conviction that of His real essence you are completely ignorant.
Even knowledge has to be in fashion and where it is not it is wise to affect ignorance.
Power coerces, knowledge persuades, love converts.