This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
Authority | Balance | Beauty | Consciousness | Dignity | Doubt | Existence | Force | Important | Judgment | Morality | Myth | Sound | Beauty |
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange
What does it tell us fi rst about relativism in the philosophical domain and then in that of dogma? It says (III, i): “Reason can arrive at the certain knowledge of the existence of God and the certain signs of divine Revelation.” Nevertheless “it will never be able to function in this way rightly and surely unless it has been properly formed; that is to say unless it has been penetrated by this healthy philosophy that we have received as a patrimony from the centuries of Christendom which have preceded us: patrimony that has been constituted over a long period of time, and that has attained to this superior degree of authority precisely because the very magisterium of the Church has submitted to the norms of divine Revelation itself its principles and its principal assertions which such grand minds have little by little discovered and defi ned. This philosophy received and commonly accepted in the Church defends the authentic and exact validity of human reason, the unshakable principles of metaphysics—the principle of suffi cient reason, of causality, of fi nality—fi nally the capacity to arrive at a certain and immutable truth.
Authority | Capacity | Church | God | Knowledge | Little | Philosophy | Principles | Revelation | Will | God |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
Respect authority while questioning it.
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 |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
There is no authority who decides what is a good idea.
The reason why the simpler sort are moved by authority is the consciousness of their own ignorance.
Authority | Consciousness | Reason |
Robert W. Fuller, fully Robert Works Fuller
When the power inherent in a position of authority is used to fortify that position, the institution's purpose is subverted. Behaviors are not aligned with the institution';s professed goals; rather they are skewed to preserve the rank, power, salaries, and security of rank-holders.
Authority | Position | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Security |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
I believe with all my heart that standing up for America means standing up for the God who has so blessed our land. We need God's help to guide our nation through stormy seas. But we can't expect Him to protect America in a crisis if we just leave Him over on the shelf in our day-to-day living.
Authority | Conservatism | Desire | Government | Heart | Individual | Soul | Government | Think |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
If you think you can - you can!
Authority | Conservatism | Desire | Freedom | Government | Heart | Individual | Soul | Government | Think |
Dominance relationships are based on coercion or habitual deference; authority relationships are voluntary and conscious. In reality, however, these types of power relations often overlap.
A study of preschool children in Virginia showed that those who dominated the attention of others also won the most struggles over access to toys. Observers attached the label ‘high-ranking’ to these dominant children. Middle- and low-ranking children focused their attention on those with higher rank than themselves rather than on those whom they could displace at the toy shelf. They also spent much more time glancing at high-ranking classmates than vice versa. Attention focused upward. In addition, the children tended to orient themselves spatially (to find their place) by locating those in their own rank and by staying in close proximity to them.
Leaders have the courage to face inevitable conflict openly and head on. Whenever strong willed people interact on a frequent basis, there will be occasional disagreements and conflict. The effective leader recognizes this as a fact of life and does not shy away from conflict because of the tension and stress involved.
Adaptability | Authority | Capacity | Creativity |
I suspect that they continued to experience leadership as an activity performed without authority, beyond expectations.
Authority | Power | Will | Leadership |
Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"
A true social revolution requires a spiritual transformation of the masses degraded by centuries of bourgeois class rule and that it is only by extirpating the habits of obedience and servility to the last roots that the working class can acquire the understanding of a new form of self-discipline. [paraphrase by Noam Chomsky]
Authority | Giving | Little | Organization | People | Resilience | Work |
As a columnist noted in late 1975, ‘Today it is almost as though the war never happened. Americans have somehow blocked it out of their consciousness. They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about its consequences.’ Vietnam was barely mentioned in the presidential campaign of 1976. It took us nearly a decade before we even began to face the sacrifices, mistakes, and costs of the Vietnam War, before we began to build monuments, make documentaries and films, embrace the soldiers who fought the war, and capture its lessons.’
In human societies, adaptive work consists of efforts to close the gap between reality and a host of values not restricted to survival.
Attention | Authority | Need | Organization | People | Will | Leadership |
The flight to authority is particularly dangerous for at least two reasons: first, because the work avoidance often occurs in response to our biggest problems and, second, because it disables some of our most important personal and collective resources for accomplishing adaptive work.
Authority | Democracy | Inclination | Light | Power | Responsibility |