#bi

She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination. ↗

— Bram Stoker

#brains #combination #gifted #giftedness #god

He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#intelligence #professionalism #significance #vulnerability #intelligence

and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes. ↗

— Herman Melville

#herman-melville #innocence #intelligence #sailor #intelligence

What'll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?" demanded Miss Haydock. "Well, Eve -- it will be awkward if I do that. Poor lamb! I shall have to make him believe I only did it by looking fragile and pathetic at the viva. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#academia #academic-degrees #achievements #clichés #double-standards

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence. ↗

— Gary L. Francione

#birds #fish #humans #intelligence #morally-valuable

The truth was, neither the Central Intelligence Agency nor any of the other official and unofficial U.S. intelligence organizations have ever been some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing, global illuminati. For starters, we never hand that kind of funding. ↗

— Max Brooks

#zombies #intelligence

And, if you'll investigate the history of science, my dear boy, I think you'll find that most of the really big ideas have come from intelligent playfulness. All the sober, thin-lipped concentration is really just a matter of tidying up around the fringes of the big ideas. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#history #history-of-science #ideas #intelligent-playfulness #science

When criticism doesn't make sense, it is usually coming from a different place. ↗

— Shannon L. Alder

#book-critics #jealousy #jealousy

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant,' it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive. ↗

— Eric Alterman

#america #appearance #believe #centuries #current