Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Phillips Brooks

You must ask yourself first, what God is. You must see how at the very bottom of His existence, as you conceive of it, lie these two thoughts – purpose and righteousness; how absolutely impossible it is to give God any personality except as the fulfillment of these two qualities – the intelligence that plans in love, and the righteousness that lives in duty.

Duty | Existence | Fulfillment | God | Intelligence | Love | Personality | Purpose | Purpose | Qualities | Righteousness | God |

Tom Butler-Bowdon

Success is not primarily a matter of circumstances or native talent or even intelligence – it is a choice.

Choice | Circumstances | Intelligence | Success | Talent |

Albert Einstein

As a human being, one has been endowed with just enough intelligence to be able to see clearly how utterly inadequate that intelligence is when confronted with what exists.

Enough | Intelligence |

Jacques Ellul

Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions… The propagandist must insist on the purity of his own intentions and, at the same time, hurl accusations at his enemy.

Enemy | Events | Nature | Purity | Time |

David Hockey

Sentient species think (to the extent that this is possible for their species) and act rationally most of the time. To do otherwise reduces the species chances of survival because their home (the universe) is rationally (i.e., causally) constructed. The universe’s causality binds thinking, language and intelligence together.

Intelligence | Language | Survival | Thinking | Time | Universe | Think |

David Starr Jordan

The infinite expanse of the universe, its growth through immeasurable periods of time, the boundless range of its changes, and the rational order that pervades it all, seems to demand an infinite intelligence behind its manifestations.

Growth | Intelligence | Order | Time | Universe |

Robert Jervis

All too often… intelligence estimates tell us more about interests and foreign policy preferences of powerful groups in government than it does about the other side’s intentions and capabilities are.

Foreign policy | Government | Intelligence | Policy | Government |

Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin

The practical value of intelligence depends on the attitude of mind of its recipients.

Intelligence | Mind | Value |

Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin

In terms of… intelligence operations, noise is the buzz set up by competing information signals which prevents the essential message from being heard loud and clear.

Intelligence | Noise |

Charles Edward Merriam

The future belongs to those who fuse intelligence with faith, and who with courage and determination grope their way forward from chance to choice, from blind adaptation to creative evolution.

Chance | Choice | Courage | Determination | Evolution | Faith | Future | Intelligence |

Flower A. Newhouse

Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability.

Ability | Failure | Intelligence | Power | Will | Failure |

Rosemary Radford Ruether

We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement.

Earth | Intelligence | Nature | Necessity | Need | Refinement | Responsibility | Learn | Privilege |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions.

People |

James Abbott McNeill Whistler

Art happens - no hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

Art | Intelligence | Safe |

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

Effort | Intelligence | Strength |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Contrast | Intelligence | Child |