This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”" -
"Perfection of hearing is not hearing others, but oneself. Perfection of vision is not seeing others, but oneself." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddied? You are the one who must grow up." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first freedom is speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world-terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world-terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"What we need... is a new “paradigm” - a new vision of reality; a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions, and values. The beginnings of this change, of the shift from the mechanistic to the holistic conception of reality, are already visible in all fields and are likely to dominate the present decade." - Fritjof Capra
"Where there is no vision, there is no hope." - George Washington Carver
"Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do... For me, the conception of hell lies in two words: “too late.”" - Gian-Carlo Menotti
"The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The vision of a world community based on justice, not power, is the necessity of our age." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has not other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such." - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such." - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
"Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty? I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his or her country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights." - Howard Zinn
"Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression." - Isaac Bashevis Singer
"True spirituality is not a removal or escape from life. It is an opening, a seeing of the world with a deeper vision that is less self-centered, a vision that sees through dualistic views to the underlying interconnectedness of all life. Liberation is the discovery of freedom in the very midst of our bodies and minds." - Jack Kornfield
"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverbs
"What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that of death! Without this radiant idea - this delightful morning star, indicting that the luminary of eternity is going to rise, life would, to my view, darken into midnight melancholy. The expectation of living here, and living thus always, would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming despair. But thanks to that fatal decree that dooms us to die; thanks to that gospel which opens the vision of an endless life; and thanks above all to that Saviour friend who has promised to conduct the faithful through the sacred trance of death, into scenes of Paradise and everlasting delight." - John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
"The willingness to harm or hurt comes ultimately out of fear. Non-harming requires that you see your own fears and that you understand them and own them. Owning them means taking responsibility for them. Taking responsibility means not letting fear completely dictate your vision or your view. Only mindfulness completely dictate your vision or your view. Only mindfulness of our own clinging and rejecting, and a willingness to grapple with these mind states, however painful the encounter, can free us from this circle of suffering. Without a daily embodiment in practice, lofty ideals tend to succumb to self-interest." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Basically, the "vision quest" involves getting past your own limitations, which are within even as they appear to be without." - Joseph Campbell
"By observing a supposed objective truth out there, we become passive victims relieved of responsibility. Instead, we can use our eyes in active vision, to see with, not through. Rather than compounding our neighbor’s error through intellectual condemnation of him, we can enter actively into that relationship through our heart. Freeing him from error in our mind’s eye, we open him to deliverance in his own. There is only one heart, and it can take on any form." - Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
"Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes." - Kahlil Gibran
"Compassion leaves an indelible blueprint of the recognition that life so sorely needs between one individual and another; one nation and another; one culture and another. It is also valid for the road which our spirit should be building now for crossing the historical abyss that still separates us from a truly contemporary vision of life, and the increase of life and meaning that awaits us in the future." - Laurens van der Post
"Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them - a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the will." - Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
"Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements." - Napoleon Hill
"Let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious, to follow out one's daydream to its natural consummation, although if the vision have been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after his is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought - the subtle rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for--because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything." - Peter Marshall
"Education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes… But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body." - Plato NULL
"That which destroyeth a vision is the veil over it." - Ptah-hotep, aka Ptahhotpe or Ptah-Hotep NULL
"What is life but the angle of vision? What is life but what a [person] is thinking of all day? By how much we know, so much we are." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"For all our penny-wisdom, for all our soul-destroying slavery to habit, it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts; that all men value the few real hours of life; they love to be heard; they love to be caught up in the vision of principles." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Anger deprives a sage of his wisdom, a prophet of his vision." - Simeon ben Lakish, or Shimon ben Lakish or Reish Lakish
"Whatever you do in life, do with love! We have no alternative save to act from motives of hate - yet how doleful to make this our choice! For hate is the destroyer of life, where love is its guardian. Hate blinds our vision and warps our talents; but love releases our energies for the creative action that sustains mankind. while all human behavior springs from a mixture of both these great forces of nature, it is within our power to determine which shall prevail as we journey through life... We must tip the balance ever in favor of love if we wish to hurdle the obstacles before us on the road to normal happiness and success." - Smiley Blanton
"… presented a vision of the universe progressing towards a goal, the spiritual development of humanity… noosphere – the mind’s capacity to know itself." - Teilhard de Chardin, fully Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"The grand result of schooling is a mind with just vision to discern, with free force to do: the grand schoolmaster is Practice." - Thomas Carlyle
"It’s a man’s sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet." - Thomas Carlyle
"Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness, a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments, they are to be seen. This surely implies as its chief condition, a finely-gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration." - Thomas Carlyle
"No one, no thing, is without a spirit. The spirit of a man who knows no spiritual things still exists, but is only resting in the reality of spirit, waiting to be awakened and used. All we have to do is to find that spirit through the guidance of Inner Vision and then awaken that spirit. Even those who once showed no spiritual knowledge know their spirit has been touched. If you can then heal the spirit, and heal that spirit with enough belief and power, then the power transcends the spirit and makes itself manifest in the flesh. But remember, we are just a bridge, a vessel, to be used by the Creator, and it is not us who decide to use the power." - Tom Brown, Jr.
"Inner Vision does not communicate to us in the words and concepts of man but through the language of the heart." - Tom Brown, Jr.
"Rome remained great as long as she had enemies who forced her to unity, vision and heroism. When she had overcome them all she flourished for a moment and then began to die." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”" - Chief Luther Standing Bear
"A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown." - Denis E. Waitley