#dom

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status - but rarely for your wisdom. ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#modern-values #priorities #truths #values #wealth-and-virtues

(about William Blake) [Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death." And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral." But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All! ↗

— Brenda Ueland

#creativity #faith #freedom #art

It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much, the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons… ↗

— Douglas Adams

#wisdom #inspirational

The compassionate person does not require other people to be stupid, in order to be intelligent. Their intelligence is for everyone, so as to have a world in which there is less ignorance. (118) ↗

— Jean-Yves Leloup

#ignorance #intelligence #wisdom #intelligence

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance. ↗

— Brian Tracy

#wisdom #life

Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely. ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#wisdom #intelligence

An intelligent enemy,' he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, 'rather than a foolish friend.' Or, 'He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.' Or, the favourite of Jan Fishan Khan: 'Nothing is what it seems. ↗

— Tahir Shah

#afghanistan #folklore #proverbs #saying #sufis

An egoist is always intelligent, never wise. ↗

— Raheel Farooq

#egoism #intelligence #wisdom #intelligence

The more you know, the less you need. ↗

— Yvon Chouinard

#wisdom #zen #education

Vivid simplicity is the articulation, the nature of genius. Wisdom is greater than intelligence; intelligence is greater than philosobabble. ↗

— Criss Jami

#articulation #babble #babbling #cleverness #comprehension