This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
In Godmanhood human freedom unites with the divine freedom, the human image with the divine image. By inward experience and inward living of freedom the light of that Truth is attained.
Experience | Freedom | Light | Truth |
Saint Bonaventure, born John of Fidanza Bonaventure
That we may arrive at an understanding of the First Principle, which is most spiritual and eternal and above us, we ought to proceed through the traces which are corporeal and outside us; and this it to be led into the way of God. We ought next to enter into our minds, which are the eternal image of God, spiritual and internal; and this is to walk in the truth of God. We ought finally to pass over into that which is eternal, most spiritual, and above us, looking to the First Principle; and this is to rejoice in the knowledge of God and in the reverence of His majesty.
Eternal | God | Knowledge | Reverence | Truth | Understanding | God |
The truth which makes people free is for the most part the truth which people prefer not to hear.
Al-Shafi’I, fully Abū ʿAbdullāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs al-Shafiʿī NULL
Never do I argue with a; man with a desire to hear him say what is wrong, or to expose him and win a victory over him… Whenever I face an opponent in debate I silently pray, “O Lord, Help him so that truth may flow from his heart and on his tongue, and so that if truth is on my side, he may follow me; and if it be on his side, I may follow him.”
Unanimity is worse than censorship. Censorship obliges us to hold our own truth silent; unanimity forces us to repeat the truth of others, even thought we do not believe it… It dissolves our own personalities into a general, monotonous chorus.
Nobody can, even for the sake of unity, do violence to his conscience and to truth itself. Whoever in conscience feels obliged to understand the Word of God in a certain way cannot and may not declare he understands it otherwise.
Conscience | God | Truth | Unity | God | Understand |
Helena Blavatsky, aka Helena Petrovna "H.P." Blavatsky or Madame Blavatsky, born Helena von Hahn
We must prepare and study truth under every aspect, endeavoring to ignore nothing, if we do not wish to fall into the abyss of the unknown when the hour shall strike.
To become Divine is the aim of life: then only can truth be said to be ours beyond the possibility of loss, because it is no longer outside of us, nor even in us, but we are it, and it is we.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Belief in God is belief in the highest Truth and Right, exalted above the wrongness of the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. It is divine-human; in it the ideal humanity operates.
Belief | God | Humanity | Man | Right | Truth | World | God |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The dignity of man and the dignity of faith require the recognition of freedom to choose the truth, and freedom in the truth. Freedom cannot be identified with goodness or truth or perfection: it is by nature autonomous, it is freedom and not goodness.
Dignity | Faith | Freedom | Man | Nature | Perfection | Truth |
There is an absolute truth about everything; it lies behind all blunders and all partial knowledges, a calm, sure, unfound certainty, like the great sea beneath its waves, like the great sky behind its clouds. God knows it. It and the possession of it makes the eternal difference between God’s knowledge and man’s. It is a beautiful and noble faith when a man thus believes in the absolute truth, unfound, unfindable perhaps by man, and yet surely existent behind and at the heart of everything.
Absolute | Eternal | Faith | God | Heart | Knowledge | Man | Truth | God |