This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
In order to live we must decide on one course of action rather than another, moment by moment. We declare our values and take our stands in both small ways and large. Were we to admit that we are never certain that we have chosen correctly, and never reassured that this chosen course was the correct course of action, then we would be open to the unending exploration and revision in our way of living. We would have learned to put our prejudices and assumptions, our convictions and beliefs at risk.
Action | Convictions | Order | Risk |
Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.
Action | Change | Humanity | Ideas | Men | Society | Waiting | Will | Society |
The temptation of Protestantism has always been to magnify freedom at the expense of unity. The temptation of Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, has been to magnify unity at the expense of freedom.
Freedom | Temptation | Unity | Temptation |
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic offers.
The universe appears to us in two opposite parts, I and World. We erect this barrier between ourselves and the world as soon as consciousness first dawn on us… Only when we have made the world-content into our thought-content do we begin again to find the unity out of which we have separated ourselves… Our thinking links us to the world; our feeling leads us back into ourselves and thus makes us individuals.
Consciousness | Dawn | Thinking | Thought | Unity | Universe | World |
Action makes propaganda’s effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is not obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.
Absurd | Action | Authority | Justification | Obedience | Past | Receive | Will | Propaganda |
In this new world-conception all phenomena are related to one another. Each conditions and is in turn conditioned by the others, so that the world becomes an integrated whole – an integrated unity of interdependent parts.
Interdependent | Phenomena | Unity | World |
Technology has wiped out the frontiers that formerly separated men, countries and peoples. Man has become a citizen of the world. Thus, modern man finds himself in an environment without spiritual unity or religious homogeneity.
Man | Men | Technology | Unity | World |
Man is no longer to be regarded as an isolated unity lost in cosmic solitudes, because a universal will to live converges and is harmonized in him. Man is no longer to be seen as a static centre of the world… but as the axis and the leading shoot of evolution.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard – every action of oneself by another.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
I believe in the essential unity of man, and for that matter, of all lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.
A passionate translation of the Sh’ma: Sh’ma: listen, or wake up. Yisroel: you who seek to understand and connect with God. Adonai: the Eternal One who has been present since the beginning of time and who expresses love and wisdom by entering our hearts and our world as Eloheynu: our God. Adonai Ekhad: this Eternal energy is the unity within and between all things.
Beginning | Energy | Eternal | God | Love | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends.
Action | Cunning | Ends | Man | Means | Pride | Qualities | Will |
J. W. Fulbright, fully James William Fulbright
We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about the 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
Action | Dissent | Fear | Thinking | World | Learn | Think |