This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You are not here to fritter away your precious hours when you have the ability to accomplish so much by making a slight change in your routine.
The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Robert J. Shiller, fully Robert James "Bob" Shiller
The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence.
Ability | Attention | Focus | Important | Intelligence |
In order to change, one must first assume responsibility: one must commit oneself to some action. The word "responsibility" itself denotes that capability: "response"+"ability" - that is the ability to respond.
Ability | Action | Capability | Change | Order | Responsibility |
The certainty of a God giving meaning to life far surpasses in attractiveness the ability to behave badly with impunity. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice and that is where the bitterness comes in. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. Everything is permitted does not mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd merely confers an equivalence on the consequences of those actions.
Ability | Absurd | Bitterness | Choice | Consequences | Giving | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | God |
Power is defined [as] the ability to make certain things happen, or to prevent certain things from happening.
The greatest gift that extraordinarily successful people have over the average person is their ability to get themselves to take action.
Supreme Being is as impartial as the sun. If one flower bud opens when the run arise and another does not, it is due to its own preparedness and not to any partiality of the sun. Similarly, Divine Grace flows everywhere, always; it is only man’s willingness and ability to respond to it that varies. Supreme Being cannot be propitiated. Being all benevolence, it can not be induced to become more benevolent to one than to another or in one instance than in another. All things manifest Supreme Being in its innumerable aspects; all things issue forth from it and return to it.
Ability | Benevolence | Grace | Man | Partiality |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Wealth is the product of man's ability to think.
If to talk to oneself when alone is folly, it must be doubly unwise to listen to oneself in the presence of others... In conversation discretion is more important than eloquence.
Conversation | Discretion | Folly | Important |
Great ability develops and reveals itself increasingly with every new assignment.
Ability |
The primary cause of success in life is the ability to set and achieve goals. That’s why the people who do not have goals are doomed forever to work for those who do. You either work to achieve your own goals or you work to achieve someone else’s.
Ability | Cause | Goals | Life | Life | People | Success | Work |
A dog is not considered good because of his barking, and a man is not considered clever because of his ability to talk.