This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
At present, there can be little doubt that the whole of mankind is in mortal danger, not because we are short of scientific and technological know-how, but because we tend to use it destructively, without wisdom. More education can help us only if produces more wisdom.
Nature |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Comparative psychology teaches us to recognize a very long series of successive steps in the development of soul in the animal kingdom. But it is only in the most highly developed vertebrates-birds and mammals--that we discern the first beginnings of reason, the first traces of religious and ethical conduct. In them we find not only the social virtues common to all the higher socially-living animals,--neighborly love, friendship, fidelity, self-sacrifice, etc.,--but also consciousness, sense of duty, and conscience; in relation to man their lord, the same obedience, the same submissiveness, and the same craving for protection, which primitive man in his turn shows towards his "gods."
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
As our mother earth is a mere speck in the sunbeam in the illimitable universe, so man himself is but a tiny grain of protoplasm in the perishable framework of organic nature. [This] clearly indicates the true place of man in nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and the arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element.
Truth |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession], (2) Wissen [Knowledge], (3) Konnen [Ability], (4) Sein [Being].
Truth |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor.
Take the time to line up the Energy first, and action becomes inconsequential. If you don't take the time to line up the Energy, if you don't find the feeling place of what you're looking for, not enough action in the world will make any difference.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Thus the same statement that guarantees that God exists and that his most suitable name is He Who Is, also reveals to us the perfect simplicity of the divine essence. And indeed, God did not say: I am this or that, but simply I Am. I am what? I am ‘I Am.’ So, more than ever, the statement of Exodus seems to soar above in a kind of empty space, where the attraction of the weight of philosophy can no longer be felt. The work of reason is good, healthy, and important, for it proves that, left to itself, philosophy can establish with certitude the existence of the primary being whom everyone calls God. But a single word of the sacred text at once puts us in personal relations with him. We say his name, and by the simple fact of saying it, it teaches us the simplicity of the divine essence.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
The Greek gods are the crude but telling expression of this absolute conviction that since man is somebody, and not merely something, the ultimate explanation for what happens to him should rest with somebody, and not merely with somethingÂ… Mythology is not the first step on the path to true philosophy. In fact, it is no philosophy at all. Mythology is a first step on the path to true religion: it is religious in its own right.
Philosophy | Rebellion | Thinking | Truth |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
The old -- like children -- talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!
Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure.
If we want to revive a perception which is not familiar to us, such as the taste of a fruit of which we have eaten but once, our endeavors will terminate, generally speaking, in causing a kind of concussion in the fibres of the brain and of the mouth; and the perception shall bear no resemblance to the taste of that fruit. It would be the same in regard to a melon, to a peach, or even to a fruit of which we had never tasted. The like remark may be made in respect to the other senses.
Circumstances | Distinguish | Nature |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
The true reason why this universe appears to some scientists as mysterious is that, mistaking existential, that is, metaphysical, questions for scientific ones, they ask science to answer them. Naturally, they get no answers. Then they are puzzled, and they say that the universe is mysterious.
Absolute | Existence | God | Knowledge | Need | Scripture | Truth | God | Understand |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Why should those eminently rational beings, the scientists, deliberately prefer to the simple notions of design, or purposiveness, in nature, the arbitrary notions of blind force, chance, emergence, sudden variation, and similar ones? Simply because they much prefer a complete absence of intelligibility to the presence of a nonscientific intelligibility.
Cause | Ideas | Knowing | Man | Nature | Need | Organization | Purpose | Purpose | Sense |
But as soon as a man comes to connect ideas with signs of his own choosing, we find his memory is formed.
Nature |
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
A man's work is in danger of deteriorating when he thinks he has found the one best formula for doing it. If he thinks that, he is likely to feel that all he needs is merely to go on repeating himself . . . so long as a person is searching for better ways of doing his work, he is fairly safe.