This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The spirit of nonresistance… is the greatest force because it is the highest expression of the soul." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Speculating will not do. It takes the forward movement of deliberate, dynamic living to make this journey – especially the longest and most important journey of all, the journey from our heads to our hearts and from our hearts to our wills. If the journey is life, then only through living will truths gain force that are otherwise barren platitudes." - Os Guiness
"Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories – the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. They are the great intellectual achievements of this century. The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe (that is the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million miles – the size of the observable universe). Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct." - Stephen Hawking
"Faith is not a miniature of thinking but its model, not its shadow but its root. It is a spiritual force in man, not dealing with the given, concrete, limited, but directed upon the transcendent. It is the spring of our creative actions." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holy dimension of all reality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues." - Thomas Hobbes
"Poetry will not save the world. But poetry can force the soul into the precincts of its last evasion." - Stanley Hopper, fully Stanley Romaine Hopper
"I too think that time and space are concepts created by the human mind and that if we attempt to find out what their true natures are, we are compelled to return to the nature of the greater life force." - Daisaku Ikeda and Arnold Toynbee
"Sexuality is a force to be controlled and transformed; its energy must be channeled and educated." - Bakola wa Ilunga
"If things are ever to move upward, someone must be ready to take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try nonresistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. But nonresistance, when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects." - William James
"Change begins by not trying to change. What you imagine you must do in order to change yourself is often the very force that keeps you precisely the way you are… Beneath all the layers of wanting to be different, self-dissatisfaction, pretense, charade, and denial is a self. This self is a living, dynamic force within everyone. And if you could remain still long enough here, now, in this very place, you would discover who you are. And by discovering who you are, you would be at last free to discover who you yet also might be." - Lawrence Kushner
"He who by Tao purposes to help a ruler of men will oppose all conquest by force of arms; for such things are wont to rebound." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Crystals are like concentrated knowledge pressed into crystalline form. They are the culmination of life force coming together in time and space. The crystal shows nature’s urge for symmetry and perfection. Our life purpose is like that – purposeful curiosity and imagination yearning for balance and beauty." - Glenn W. Lehrer
"Nobody ought to be compelled in matters of religion either by law or force." - John Locke
"The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society." -
"We are shown that our live exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics… We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. Spirits an be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter - grass matter. The spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass." - Mohawk Nation NULL
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." -
"By “nationalism” I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled “good” or “bad.” But secondly… I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism… By “patriotism” I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality." -
"The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely itself." - Boris Pasternak, fully Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
"The powers of this world, founded upon force and forging ever more perfect weapons of death, will always dismiss Him as impossible." - W. G. Peck, fully William George Peck
"Force may subdue, but love gains; and he that forgives first, wins the laurel." - William Penn
"In all conflict with evil, the method to be used is love and not force. When we use evil methods to defeat evil, it is evil that wins." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice." - Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
"The oppressor must have the cooperation of the oppressed, of those he must feel better than. The oppressed and the damned are placed in an inferior position by force of arms, physical strength, and later, by threats of such force. But the long-time maintenance of power over others is secured by psychological manipulation and seduction." - Patricia Rawlins Robinson
"There is a force within that gives you life - seek that. In your body there lies a precious jewel - seek that. Oh, wandering Sufi, if you are in search of the greatest treasure, don’t look outside, look within, and seek that." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"Jainism describes a world without a creator God in which human beings’ true nature as “energy, consciousness, and bliss” has been tarnished by karma. The free movement of life force toward its fulfillment in purity as the supreme value, upheld by an ethic of radical non-violence (ahimsa), characterized by a respect for the life force of all beings and a recognition of the fundamental interconnectedness of all… ignore this truth about interconnectedness endangers ourselves and the planet, whether we subscribe to the Jain worldview or not." - Joseph Runzo and Nancy M. Martin
"In the world He appears to me as the mysterious, marvelous creative Force; within me He reveals Himself as ethical Will. In the world He is impersonal Force; within me He reveals Himself as Personality. The God who is known through philosophy and the God whom I experience as ethical Will do not coincide. They are one; but how they are one I do not understand." - Albert Schweitzer
"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL
"No amount of libido, or passion, no external force, and no inner prompting to sin can make the human action of man anything but free. We are never tempted beyond our strength. Every moral failure is ours alone, because our choices are our own." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"He who would take good care of his health should be sparing in his tastes, banish his worries, temper his desires, restrain his emotions, take good care of his vital force, spare his words, regard lightly success and failure, ignore sorrows and difficulties, drive away foolish ambitions, avoid great likes and dislikes, calm his vision and his hearing, and be faithful in his internal regimen. How can one have sickness if he does not tire his spirits and worry his soul? Therefore he would nourish his nature should eat only when he is hungry and not fill himself with food, and he should drink only when he is thirsty and not fill himself with too much drink. He should eat little and between long intervals, and not too much and not too constantly. He should aim at being a little hungry when well-filled, and being a little well-filled when hungry. Being well-filled hurts the lungs and being hungry hurts the flow of vital energy." - Ssemiao NULL
"Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe there was something to live for, he would not live. If he does not see and understand the unreality of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he sees that unreality, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Growth in love will contribute more than any other force to establish the Kingdom of God on earth." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds... An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much." - Simone Weil
"To me the worst thing seems to be a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and the self-confidence of pupils and produces a subservient subject." - Albert Einstein
"When children experience violence, or observe violence against their mothers, they learn it's acceptable--even moral--to use force to impose one's will on others. Indeed, the only way they can make sense of violence coming from those who are supposed to love them is that it must be moral." - Riane Eisler, fully Riane Tennenhaus Eisler
"Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories - the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics... The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe, that is, the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million (1 with twenty-four zeros after it) miles, the size of the observable universe. Quantum mechanics, on the other hands, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other - they cannot both be correct." -
"Force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished." - Alfred Thayer Mahan
"The value and force of a man's judgment can be measured by his ability to think independently of his temperamental leanings." - Alice Beal Parsons
"Why will you take by force what you may obtain by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war?... We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in friendly manner... I am not so simple as not to know it is better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my women and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and being their friend, trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them... Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may die in the same manner." - Powhatan, proper name was Wahunsenacawh, also spelled Wahunsonacock NULL
"Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure." - Joseph Sugarman
"I contend that dishonesty will create a failure force that often manifests itself in other ways - ways not apparent to the outside observer." - Joseph Sugarman
"The art of peace does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term samurai is one who serves and adheres to the power of love." - Morihei Ueshiba
"The motivating force for change has to come from an energized, empowered public." - Paul Wellstone, fully Paul David Wellstone
"The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason: terror and force." - Adolph Hitler