This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Life consists in learning to live on one’s own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one’s own—be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.
Alienation | Comfort | Consciousness | Culture | Mind | Need | Noise | Present | Sense | Sound |
Now one of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves. If we were terrified of God as an inexorable judge, we would not confidently await His mercy, or approach Him trustfully in prayer.
Alienation | Comfort | Consciousness | Culture | Mind | Need | Noise | Present | Sense | Sound |
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
Culture | Extreme | Freedom | Global | Ideas | Innovation | Risk-taking | Stigma | System |
The Jewish-Muslim symbiosis could develop because the mainstream of Islam is tolerant of Jews and Judaism. To be sure, there are hate-inspired utterances about Jews in the Kur’an and its commentaries, but compared to the Christian denunciations they are mild. Notwithstanding Islam’s theological disapproval of its mother and the restrictions imposed upon “infidels” (Christians as well as Jews), there were no pogroms under Muslim rule until Zionism’s identification with “Western civilization” alienated the Arabs, for whom “Western civilization” is synonymous with Christianity and colonialism. The isolated cases of pre-modern persecution of Jews by Muslims were inspired by short-lived sectarian groups.
Aid | Change | Culture | Force | Peace | Spirit | Understanding | Unique | Will |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.
Anger | Culture | Enlightenment | Error | Evil | Happy | Language | Love | Music | Public | Speech | Strength | Will | Woman | World | Afraid |
A religion without the Holy Ghost, though it had all the ordinances and all the doctrines of the New Testament, would certainly not be Christianity.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
We cannot assume the injustice of any actions which only create offense, and especially as regards religion and morals. He who utters or does anything to wound the conscience and moral sense of others, may indeed act immorally; but, so long as he is not guilty of being importunate, he violates no right.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
Culture |
When people, land, and community are as one, all three members prosper; when they relate not as members but as competing interests, all three are exploited. By consulting Nature as the source and measure of that membership, The Land Institute seeks to develop an agriculture that will save soil from being lost or poisoned while promoting a community life at once prosperous and enduring.
We must live in groups; other people are like nutrients for us, and are absolutely essential for our survival.
Behavior | Conduct | Culture | Emotions | Order | Persuasion | Power | Preference | Think |
The forces of power, particularly corporate power, are impatient with what is adequate for a coherent community. Because power gains so little from community in the short run, it does not hesitate to destroy community for the long run.
We need to be saying, 'Listen folks, capitalism is inherently destructive.' How do we get from where we are to where we need to be... We have got to get rid of capitalism.
Attention | Culture | Global | Television |
The character-armored, mechanistically rigid person thinks mechanistically, produces mechanistic tools, and forms a mechanistic conception of nature. The armored person who feels his orgonotic body excitations in spite of his biological rigidity, but does not understand them, is mystic man. He is interested not in material but in spiritual things. He forms a mystical, supernatural idea about nature. Both the mechanist and the mystic stand inside the limits and conceptual laws of a civilization which is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods. This civilization forms the mechanistic-mystical structures of men, and the mechanistic-mystical character structures keep reproducing a the mechanistic-mystical civilization. Both mechanists and mystics find themselves inside the framework of human structure in a civilization conditioned by mechanistics and mysticism. They cannot grasp the basic problems of this civilization because their thinking and philosophy correspond exactly to the condition they project and continue to reproduce. In order to realize the power of mysticism, one has only to think of the murderous conflict between Hindus and Muslims at the time India was divided. To comprehend what mechanistic civilization means, think of the age of the atom bomb.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
I can never stand still. I must explore and experiment. I am never satisfied with my work. I resent the limitations of my own imagination.
Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word FREEDOM should ever be more than an empty political slogan.
Civilization | Culture | Distinguish | Dreams | Looks | Man | Peace | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Science |
No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as “God,” “Natural Law,” “Cosmic Primordial Force,” “Ether” or “Cosmic Orgone Energy.”
Achievement | Culture | Instinct | Man | Morality | Time | Unity | Will | Work |
The prophet is engaged in a battle for language in an effort to create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge.