“Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“Circumstances are the rulers of the weak, but they are the instruments of the wise.”
Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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John C. Maxwell145
American author, speaker and pastor 1947Related quotes
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.”
Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist
As quoted in What Great Men Think About Religion (1945) by Ira D. Cardiff, p. 342. No original source for this has been found in the works of Seneca, or published translations. It is likely that the quote originates with Edward Gibbon who wrote:<blockquote>The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. — Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. I http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/890, Ch. II</blockquote> Elbert Hubbard would claim in 1904 ( Little Journeys: To the homes of great philosophers: Seneca http://www.online-literature.com/elbert-hubbard/journeys-vol-eight/2/) that Gibbon was "making a free translation from Seneca". <br class="br">Disputed
“Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian
Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 138
Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)
Fatawa-i-Jahandari, p.64. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Fatawa-i-Jahandari
Hamza Yusuf (1958) American Islamic scholar
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/158902.Hamza_Yusuf
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God
Context: And He is the God of the humble, for in the words of the Apostle, God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty (I Cor. i. 27) And God is in each of us in the measure in which one feels Him and loves Him. "If of two men," says Kierkegaard, "one prays to the true God without sincerity of heart, and the other prays to the an idol with all the passion of an infinite yearning, it is the first who really prays to the idol, while the second really prays to God." It would be better to say that the true God is He to whom man truly prays and whom man truly desires. And there may even be a truer revelation in superstition itself than in theology.
