This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
It is very difficult to understand that God can be a finite human being and at the same time the all-pervading Soul of the universe. The Absolute and the Relative are His two aspects. How can we say emphatically with our small intelligence that God cannot assume a human form? Can we ever understand all these ideas with our little intellect? Can a one-seer pot hold four
Absolute | God | Ideas | Intelligence | Little | Soul | Time | God | Understand |
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.
Advertising | Intelligence | Waste |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves.
Capacity | Intelligence | Organic | Rights |
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love.
Man... has a body and a soul... it is a spirit, immortal, and endowed with intelligence and free will. Soul is not just another word for spirit. Animals have souls, but their souls are not spirits. Only man's soul is a spirit; in man is the only kind of spirit that is a soul... There is an obvious difference between a living human body and a corpse. That difference is the soul.
Body | Intelligence | Man | Soul | Spirit |
If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity. If we are going to allow ourselves the luxury of postulating organized complexity without offering an explanation, we might as well make a job of it and simply postulate the existence of life as we know it!
Existence | Intelligence | Life | Life | Luxury |
It is an article of passionate faith among "politically correct" biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway.
Faith | Intelligence | Nothing | Size |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
I've always been rather very one-sided about the science, and when I was younger, I concentrated almost all my effort on it. I didn't have time to learn, and I didn't have much patience for what's called the humanities; even though in the university there were humanities that you had to take, I tried my best to avoid somehow to learn anything and to work on it. It's only afterwards [sic] when I've gotten older and more relaxed that I've spread out a little bit--I've learned to draw, and I read a little bit, but I'm really still a very one-sided person and don't know a great deal. I have a limited intelligence and I've used it in a particular direction.
Effort | Intelligence | Little | Patience | Time | Work | Learn |
Intelligence is an excellence of mind that is employed within a fairly narrow, immediate and predictable range; it is a manipulative, adjustive, unfailingly practical quality--one of the most eminent and endearing of the animal virtues. Intelligence works within the framework of limited but clearly stated goals, and may be quick to shear away questions of thought that do not seem to help in reaching them. Finally, it is of such universal use that it can daily be seen at work and admired alike by simple or complex minds. Intellect, on the other hand, is the critical, creative, and contemplative side of mind. Whereas intelligence seeks to grasp, manipulate, re-order, adjust, intellect examines, ponders, wonders, theorizes, criticizes, imagines. Intelligence will seize the immediate meaning in a situation and evaluate it. Intellect evaluates evaluations, and looks for the meanings of situations as a whole.
Excellence | Intelligence | Looks | Meaning | Mind | Thought | Will | Work | Excellence | Intellect | Thought |
R. H. Tawney, fully Richard Henry Tawney
A society which values equality will attach a high degree of significance to differences of character and intelligence between different individuals, and a low degree of significance to economic and social differences between different groups. It will endeavor, in shaping its policy and organization, to encourage the former and to neutralize and suppress the latter, and will regard it as vulgar and childish to emphasize them when, unfortunately, they still exist.
Character | Equality | Intelligence | Policy | Regard | Society | Will | Society |
Richard Tarnas, fully Richard Theodore Tarnas
Having appropriated to itself all conscious intelligence in the universe ...Man faces the existential crisis of being a solitary and mortal conscious ego thrown into an ultimately meaningless and unknowable universe ...and the psychological and biological crisis of living in a world that has come to be shaped in such a way that it precisely matches his world view
Richard Neustadt, fully Richard Elliott Neustadt
Presidents and other decision makers usually get the intelligence they want. This doesn't mean that intelligence reports should be ignored, but that they must be viewed with skepticism.
Decision | Intelligence |
Richard E. Byrd, fully Richard Evelyn Byrd, Jr.
in accidents blindness chance conviction cosmology day death despair doubt feeling force harmony heart intelligence listening music Peace purpose reason Silence universe
Chance | Day | Death | Despair | Doubt | Force | Harmony | Heart | Intelligence | Listening | Music | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Silence |
The logical thing to do, when the next war comes, is to recruit an army from all those of whatever age or sex who are unable to pass certain basic intelligence tests. This would be a good way of getting rid of a lot of the stupid people who cumber the earth; probably there would be a high percentage of scientists, Civil Servants, uplifters and minor prophets in an armed force collected in such a way. But if every country adopted this method the country with the biggest population of boobs, yahoos and ninnies would win, and I am not entirely sure that we have overall superiority in this respect, though we seem bound in that direction.
Age | Force | Good | Intelligence | Method | People | Superiority | War |
Why are so many people ashamed of having intelligence and using it? There is nothing democratic about such an attitude. To pretend to be less intelligent that one is deceives nobody and begets dislike, for intelligence cannot be hidden; like a cough, it will out, stifle it how you may. No man has ever won commendation for standing at less than his full height, either physically, morally, or intellectually.
Intelligence | Man | Nothing | People | Will |
Surely we all know scores of professional men and women who, apart from their professional concerns, seem not to have enough brains to butter a biscuit. They probably had intelligence once. But when their university had given them its blessing, they thought that enough had been done for one lifetime.
Enough | Intelligence | Men | Thought | Thought |
Roger L. Shinn, fully Roger Lincoln Shinn
One reason the Golden Rule is so popular is that it seems to require no specific faith and no specific religious beliefs. Men may argue over many questions, but often they can agree on the Golden Rule. Religious teachers all over the world, many of them long before Jesus, taught one form or another of the Golden Rule. Look at a few examples. 1. The Hindu Mahabharata teaches: "Men gifted with intelligence and purified souls should always treat others as they themselves wish to be treated." 2. A Jainist writing, also from India, says: "A man should wander about treating all creatures in the world as he himself would be treated." 3. When Confucius was asked for a single word to sum up the rules of life, he answered: "Is not reciprocity such a word ? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." 4. The Taoists taught: "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain, and regard your neighbor's loss as your own loss." 5. In the generation before Jesus a man asked the great Rabbi Hillel to teach him the Law while standing on one foot. Hillel answered: "What thou thyself hatest, do not to thy neighbor. This is the whole Law. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it."
Faith | Golden Rule | Intelligence | Law | Man | Men | Reason | Reciprocity | Regard | Rest | Rule | Teach | World | Loss | Golden Rule | Learn |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Who can approach Thy seat? For beyond the sphere of Intelligence hast Thou established the throne of Thy glory; There standeth the splendour of Thy veiled habitation, And the mystery and the foundation. Thus far reacheth Intelligence, but cometh here to a standstill, For higher still hast Thou mounted, and ascended Thy mighty throne, "And no man may go up with Thee."
Angels | Art | Beginning | Change | Dread | Intelligence | Light | Lord | Power | Spirit | Universe | Work | Art |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
O Lord, who shall do deeds like unto Thine? For Thou hast established under the throne of Thy glory A standing-place for the souls of Thy saints, And there is the abode of the pure souls That are bound up in the bundle of life. They who were weary and faint here await new strength, And those who failed of strength may here find repose; For these are the children of rest, And here is delight without end or limit, For it is The-World-To-Come. And here are stations and seeing-places for the standing souls, Whence, in "mirrors of the serving-women," They can behold and be seen of the Lord. In the palaces of the King do they dwell, And at the King’s table stand, And glory in the sweetness of the fruit of Intelligence, For He giveth them of the dainties of the King. This is the rest and the heritage Whose goodness and beauty are endless, Such is "the land which floweth with milk and honey and such the fruit thereof."
Intelligence | Man | Mystery |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
I tried to find Him on the Christian cross, but He was not there; I went to the temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas, but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere. I searched on the mountains and in the valleys, but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him. I went to the Kaaba in Mecca, but He was not there either. I questioned the scholars and philosophers, but He was beyond their understanding. I then looked into my heart, and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him; He was nowhere else to be found.
Angels | Awakening | Existence | Greed | Inclination | Intelligence | Knowing | Life | Life | Past | Will | Wise | World |