This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Mythology is a control system, on the one hand framing its community to accord with an intuited order of nature and, on the other hand, by means of its symbolic pedagogic rites, conducting individuals through the ineluctable psychophysiological stages of transformation of a human lifetime - birth, childhood and adolescence, age, old age, and the release of death - in unbroken accord simultaneously with the requirements of this world and the rapture of participation in a manner of being beyond time. For all the symbolic narratives, images, rites, and festivals by which life within the cultural monad is controlled and defined are of the order of the way of art. Their effect, therefore, is to wake the intellect to realizations equivalent to those of the insights that produced them." - Joseph Campbell
"All hormonal function, including that of the immune system and even allergic responses, occur as a sophisticated memory system handled primarily by our emotional brain. Because learning and memory are emotional-cognitive functions, the neural pattern, imprint, or “structure of knowledge” (to use Piaget’s term) of specific learning events includes in its content the memory patterns of those emotional hormones prominent in the body at the time of that learning." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"No media project succeeds based on “good news only” because good news does not trigger our alert system. Anything good indicates a safe space, the quiet background against which events can play out. The enculturated mind is cued to respond to the negative as a point of focus, which largely screens out or ignores a quiet stable base, and, because it sharpens and maintains our alert awareness, we actually begin to look for the negative." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"The worst is yet to come, however. Far more devastating that this pruning is that nature then brings about a corresponding increase of the connecting links of the emotional circuits in this cyngulate gyrus with the lower survival fight-or-flight structures of the amygdala, that neural module linked directly with our ancient defense and survival system in the reptilian brain. In this way, a sharp curtailment of connections with the higher, transcendent frequencies of mind and heart is brought about in order to shift growth toward the lower, protective survival systems." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"Judaism matters to the whole world because it is a system for making human beings decent, for turning men into menschen. The timeless mission of the Jews is to make the world better by making people better." - Joseph Jacobs
"If anything could testify to the magical powers of the priesthood of science and their technical acolytes, or declare unto mankind the supreme qualifications for absolute rulership held by the Divine Computer, this new invention alone should suffice. So the final purpose of life in terms of the megamachine at last becomes clear: it is to furnish and process an endless quantity of data, in order to expand the role and ensure the domination of the power system." - Lewis Mumford
"The margin between that which men naturally do, and that which they can do, is so great that a system which urges men on to action and develops individual enterprise and initiative is preferable, in spite of the wastes that necessarily attend their process." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill the gap." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"As the greatest single social influence during the formative years, schools have been the instruments of our greatest denial, unconsciousness, conformity, and broken connections. Just as allopathic medicine treats symptoms without concern for the whole system, schools break knowledge and experience into “subjects,” relentlessly turning wholes into parts, flowers into petals, history into events, without ever restoring continuity... Worse yet, not only the mind is broken, but too often, so is the spirit. Allopathic teaching produces the equivalent of iatrogenic, or doctor-caused” illness - teacher-caused learning disabilities. We might call these pedogenic illnesses. The child who may have come to school intact, with the budding courage to risk and explore, finds stress enough to permanently diminish that adventure." - Marilyn Ferguson
"Every nationalism is metaphorically an anthropologism, and as such subjectivism. Nationalism is not overcome though mere internationalism; it is rather expanded and elevated thereby into a system." - Martin Heidegger
"No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days." - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
"Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration. (Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system (i.e., an organ such as the brain, or an individual, a family, a corporation, a culture, or humanity as a whole) is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals. A system that is more differentiated and integrated than another is said to be more complex.)" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual's purpose merges with the universal flow." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"The [United States] educational system is geared toward obedience." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"Attitudes about treatment can have an effect on the immune system. The patient's hopes are the physician's best ally. The physician who works with those hopes and bolsters them helps to create a climate in which the 'little black bag' can be put to optimal use." - Norman Cousins
"History is a vast early warning system." - Norman Cousins
"Our system of morality is a body of imperfect social generalizations expressed in terms of emotion." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy. Truth is exact correspondence with Reality. For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his Self as soul." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Our society cannot have it both ways: to maintain a conformist and ignoble system and to have skillful and spirited men to man that system." - Paul Goodman
"The system of equality...must result from, rather than precede, the moral improvement of humankind." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The stuff of the universe, woven in a single piece according to one and the same system, but never repeating itself from one point to another, represents a single figure." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding." - Potter Stewart
"For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they are called cause, operation and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but we will call the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and the love of beauty. These three are equal. The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Socialism is that contemplated system of industrial society which proposes the abolition of private property in the great material instruments of production, and the substitution therefore of collective property; and advocates the collective management of production, together with the distribution of social income by society, and private property in the larger proportion of this social income." - Richard T. Ely
"Schools teach you to imitate. If you don't imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A's. Originality on the other hand could get you anything -- from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it." -
"The seniority system keeps a handful of old men... in control of the Congress. These old men stand inplacably across the paths that could lead us toward a better future. But worse than they, I think, are the majority of members of both Houses who continue to submit to the senility system." - Shirley Chisholm
"Slavery is a system of outrage and robbery." - Socrates NULL
"Taste has no system and no proofs." - Susan Sontag
"The soul is more interested in particulars than in generalities. That is true of personal identity as well. Identifying with a group or a syndrome or a diagnosis is giving in to an abstraction. Soul provides a strong sense of individuality - personal destiny, special influences and background, and unique stories. In the face of overwhelming need for both emergency and chronic care, the mental health system labels people schizophrenics, alcoholics, and survivors so that it can bring some order to the chaos of life at home and on the street, but each person has a special story to tell, no matter how many common themes it contains." - Thomas Moore
"If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense of organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in and drop out." - Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
"I find in the universe so many forms of order, organization, system, law, and adjustment of means to ends, that I believe in a cosmic intelligence and I conceive God as the life, mind, order, and law of the world." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"An intellectual… [is] a person who has learned to establish relationships between the different elements of his sum of knowledge, one who possesses a coherent system of relationships into which he can fit all such new items of information as he may pick up in the course of his life." - Aldous Leonard Huxley
"Prestige involves at least two persons: one to claim it and another to honor the claim… In the status system of a society these claims are organized as rules and expectations which regulate who successfully claims prestige, from whom, in what ways, and on what basis. The level of self-esteem enjoyed by given individuals is more or less set by this status system." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
"Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: "You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do."" - Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
"If we see the universe as not simply a bunch of dead matter and empty space but actually a living system, then our story may well be one of learning how to live together in a living universe. If we don't have a story to guide us into the future, we're going to pull back into our smaller life stories of the past--stories of nationalism, of ethnic groups, of tribal groups, of geographic groups--and instead of pulling together in cooperation we're going to pull apart in conflict. What I am suggesting is to step back and see the universe as our original, larger home. If we are going to pull together as a human family for a promising future, this is an inclusive project; no one is left out." - Duane Elgin
"Akon says to Elizabeth: “We found the pyramidal type of construction most suitable for Earth and Mars where many earthquakes plagued us and radiations remained a hazard. The pyramids were constructed by us and used by later civilizations for places of worship and for burial. They are cosmic libraries, and in time, will point the way to the stars. The human race of Earth will find an escape route to the stars and away from the violence within the Sun’s system created by its variable nature.”" - Elizabeth Klarer
"Akon says to Elizabeth: “The Moon is alien to this system and came with Jupiter and its retinue of planets. Jupiter is a forming star, a star condensing, and thereby, retaining a high velocity of rotation, a large mass and low density and the usual heat in the core retained by the star. A solar system within a solar system. Seven of Jupiter’s planets have retained atmospheres and life as we know it.”" - Elizabeth Klarer
"Akon says to Elizabeth: The beauty and violence of our Galactic system harbours millions of others similar to such as these of the Sun’s System, where the cosmic rays emanating from the vast nucleus create life throughout, as in the countless other galaxies.”" - Elizabeth Klarer
"Akon says to Elizabeth: “The cradle of mankind, Venus, remained shrouded and bereft of life after the Pleistocene cycle of solar expansion, her fruitful aeons of fertility at an end, her vast warm seas that nurtured our beginning, dried out and barren. But her glory still remains as a reality in the electric mirage, perfected by her progeny, who were compelled to move from her protective surface, out into the far reaches of space to propagate their species on the surface of an alien planet called Earth, where we adapted to a different time-speed on a younger planet. Laying claim to Earth as a host to life, we continued to perfect our spaceships in rediness for the time when we would have to leave this solar system prior to another wave of mass extinctions from the star of this system.”" - Elizabeth Klarer
"Our Universe is everlasting, creating the light of eternity within its electromagnetic field, creating light in the atmospheres of planets, heat and life, in the velocity of rotation and speed in orbit about the metagalaxy, a prodigious system within the depths of intergalactic void, the limitless reaches of outer space where the minimum-temperature controls the lives of galaxies, as they orbit in continuous momentum, in ever widening circles, about the nucleus, or electromagnetic hub of the metagalaxy." - Elizabeth Klarer
"The system of morality which Socrates made it the business of his life to teach was raised upon the firm basis of religion. The first principles of virtuous conduct which are common to all mankind are, according to this excellent moralist, laws of God; and the conclusive argument by which he supports this opinion is, that no man departs from these principles with impunity." - William Enfield, aka "The Enquirer"
"A heresy can spring only from a system that is in full vigor. " - Eric Hoffer
"The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced — by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm