This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"As totality is implied in every part, so is the value of the universe involved in every event, in every phenomenon." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Life is not meaningful… unless it is serving an end beyond itself; unless it is of value to someone else." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"To see the world as being ruled by a divine love which sets infinite value upon each individual and includes all men in its scope, and yet to live as though the world were a realm of chance in which each must fight for his own interests against the rest, argues a very dim and wavering vision of God’s rule." - John Hick, fully John Harwood Hick
"Any conflict which prevents the personality from attaining wholeness is a hindrance: all taboos against considering any part of the universe in relation to man and his destiny are hindrances; so, too, are all restrictions upon the free use of reason, or the free appeal of conscience. In other words, any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"Any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"He that hopes hereafter to look back with satisfaction upon past years, must learn to know the present value of single minutes." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Wealth and fame are of dubious value when we think that life is like a fleeting dream." - Li Ju-chen
"The construction of a coherent, unified sense of self is an ongoing process. We have seen how old people express an identity through themes which are rooted in personal experience, particular structural factors, and a constellation of value orientations. Themes integrate these three sources of meaning as they structure the account of a life, express what is salient to the individual, and define a continuous and creative self." - Sharon R. Kaufman
"Joy is a constituent of life, a necessity of life; it is an element of life’s value and life’s power. As every man has need of joy, so too, every man has a right to joy… It is a condition of religious living." - Paul Wilhelm von Keppler, Bishop of the Diocese of Rottenburg
"Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life." - Abraham Isaac Kook
"What the schools can teach is what we value as a community… love, empathy, caring, cooperation, commitment to others, spiritual and ethical sensitivity, respect for difference, self-discipline, tolerance and honesty." - Michael Lerner
"The practical value of intelligence depends on the attitude of mind of its recipients." - Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin
"Public opinion is founded to a great extent on a property basis. What lessens the value of the property is opposed, what enhances its value is favored." - Abraham Lincoln
"The value of consistent prayer is not that he will hear us… but that we will finally hear Him." - William McGill, fully James McGill
"We know tradition as a living social process constantly changing, constantly in need of criticism, but constant also as the continuing memory, value system and habit structure of a society." - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
"True devotion produces as of itself a song; song, in turn excites devotion, and this reciprocal action augments the value of both, like two mirrors, which, facing each other, multiply the same image even to the profondity, so to speak, of the infinite." - Joseph Pothier, fully Dom Joseph Pothier
"No two individuals have the same vision of life. It is said that only children and sages are happy because the child has not developed a material sense of value and the same knows that the material has no value. To them form is not the point of consideration but living life." - Baird T. Spalding
"A meaningful life is also not one that has merely instrumental value to some goal, even if the goal is divine. This suggests two important conclusions; First, meaningful activities are those that have a certain kind of non-instrumental value, and a meaningful life is one that consists of such activities. Second, derived from this, the meaning of a life must be in the living of it, or rather in the way it is lived. These are important conclusions, because they apply even if God has a purpose in mind for us and even if there is an everlasting afterlife. Even if there is a goal worth struggling for, the meaning is in the struggle." - Garrett Thomson
"Evolution is not necessarily a reductive theory: it does not explain away or reduce meaningfulness and value, any more than it explains away or reduces mathematics, economics, or even sociobiology itself. It aims to provide a naturalistic explanation of biological characteristics, including the capacities that enable us to recognize value and meaning. Giving a causal explanation of the origin of capacities is not the same as giving an account of the relevant meaning or content." - Garrett Thomson
"In summary, goals or end-states are not intrinsically valuable, even though they direct and explain action. Although having aims or goals is an important and unavoidable aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because this would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are valuable to achieve because they lead to further worthwhile activities." - Garrett Thomson
"The meaning of life must be in the living of it. This is because, (a) in a sense, the meaning of one’s life is oneself, and (b) it is the person that has primary non-instrumental value. The individual has value and, consequently, so does his or her life and so do the processes that constitute that life. The finite processes of life have meaning, without the need of the Absolute." - Garrett Thomson
"The Nine Mistakes [about ways to think about the meaning of life]: (1) Only the infinite has meaning; the finite can only have meaning insofar as it participates in the infinite. (2) The meaning of life consists in some goal or purpose. (3) The meaning of life is happiness. (4) The meaning of life must be invented. (5) Life cannot have a meaning if the universe is entirely composed of matter, as science teaches us. (6) The sole or primary purpose of evaluations is to guide our choice of actions, and value judgments are reducible to reasons for action. (7) The meaning of a person’s life cannot extend to things beyond the boundaries of his or her mode of living. (8) A person’s life does not having meaning because only linguistic items can be meaningful. (9) The meaning of our lives consists in our living in accordance with a self-determined life-plan." - Garrett Thomson
"The greatest and most urgent task of educators today is to instill ineradicably into the young precisely the utility of the useless, the value of the things that produce no cash returns but that make the “soul worth saving.”" - Gerald Vann
"A human life can have meaning without an objective purpose, value or pattern. We can construct our own values in a morally patternless world." - Keith Ward
"Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with." - Bob Wells, born Robert Wells, aka Hoolihan
"It is no longer enough to be smart — all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential." - Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman
"If there should be any [persons], who though ignorant in Mathematics, yet pretending a skill in those Learnings, should dare, upon the authority of some place of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my Hypothesis, I value them not, but shall slight their inconsiderate judgment." - Nicholas Copernicus
"You'll seldom experience regret for anything that you've done. It is what you haven't done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it. Value your present moments. Using them up in any self-defeating ways means you've lost them forever." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"It is not so very important for a person to learn facts. For that he does not really need a college. He can learn them from books. The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." - Albert Einstein
"One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work, pleasure in its result, and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community." - Albert Einstein
"The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not what he is able to receive." - Albert Einstein
"To realize the value of a minute, ask a person who has missed a plane. To realize the value of a second, ask someone who narrowly escaped a serious accident. Every moment of your life has value; make the most of your moments." - Holiday Mathis
"The source of my obligation is the value I place on the relatedness of caring." - Nel Noddings
"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
"A life of mere self-preservation, for which we may well have instincts, would be for most of us a life without meaning. We want something beyond the routine of a boring and aimless existence. We want to satisfy standards of value to which we consciously adhere." - Irving Singer
"Significance does not depend on fame, power, wealth, or social standing. It depends on the value one provides - directly or indirectly - to those persons who can thereby make their lives happier or more meaningful or even more significant." - Irving Singer
"It is true that I do not think that the fact that the human is a member of the species Homo Sapiens is in itself a reason for regarding his or her life as being of greater value than that of a member of a different species." - Peter Singer
"If we want to know the possibilities for spiritual growth, value growth, or moral development in human beings, then I maintain that we can learn most by studying our most moral, ethical, or saintly people." - Abraham Harold Maslow
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow whatever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson