This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In our modern experience, but probably also in every successful and affluent culture, it is believed that enough power and knowledge can tame the terror and eliminate the darkness. A "religion of orientation" fundamentally operates on that basis. But our honest experience, both personal and public, attests to the resilience of the darkness, in spite of us. The
Danger | Imagination | Wants | Danger |
The Many can elect after the Few have nominated.
Example | Government | Imagination | Man | Nothing | Sense | Will | Government |
Anyone who thinks that carrying out some limited observance that he learned earlier on and who looks no further ahead who remains content with this will largely halt his own spiritual development... a noble and skilled apprentice who makes no further progress at all must be either dull-witted or perverse.
The prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency.
Culture | Future | Imagination | Vision |
Welcome, old friend! These many years have we lived door by door; the fates have laid aside their shears perhaps for some few more. I was indocile at an age when better boys were taught, but thou at length hast made me sage, if I am sage in aught. Little I know from other men, too little they know from me, but thou hast pointed well the pen that writes these lines to thee. Thanks for expelling Fear and Hope, one vile, the other vain; one's scourge, the other's telescope, I shall not see again. Rather what lies before my feet my notice shall engage-- He who hath braved Youth's dizzy heat dreads not the frost of Age.
For, surely, surely, where your voice and graces are, nothing of death can any feel or know.
Imagination | Youth | Youth |
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Oral communication unites people in groups. Writing and reading are solitary activities that throw the psyche back on itself.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential situation, which always engages the body. Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable. In oral verbalization, particularly public verbalization, absolute motionlessness is itself a powerful gesture.
Imagination | Sound | Words | World | Writing |
We often say things because we can say them well, rather than because they are sound and reasonable.
Reality |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Silence - not dissent - is the one answer that leaders should refuse to accept.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.
Abundance | Better | Problems | Reality | System | Tomorrow | War | Will | Think |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
Action | Capacity | Energy | Intention | Reality | Wise | Leadership |
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.
Family | Heart | Imagination | Lord | Money |
There is one in the world who feels for him who is sad a keener pang than he feels for himself; there is one to whom reflected joy is better than that which comes direct; there is one who rejoices in another's honor, more than in any which is one's own; there is one on whom another's transcendent excellence sheds no beam but that of delight; there is one who hides another's infirmities more faithfully than one's own; there is one who loses all sense of self in the sentiment of kindness, tenderness, and devotion to another; that one is woman.
Imagination | Nothing | World | Think |
It is worthy to note, that the early popularity of Washington was not the result of brilliant achievement nor signal success; on the contrary, it rose among trials and reverses, and may almost be said to have been the fruit of defeat.
Gloom | Imagination | Power | Solitude | World |