#lit

... a practical problem can only be solved by action itself. When your practical problem is how to earn a living, a book on how to make friends and influence people cannot solve it, though it may suggest things to do. Nothing short of the doing solves the problem. It is solved only by earning a living. ↗

— Mortimer J. Adler

#limitations #practicality #reading #work #intelligence

Yet human intelligence has another force, too: the sense of urgency that gives human smarts their drive. Perhaps our intelligence is not just ended by our mortality; to a great degree, it is our mortality. ↗

— Adam Gopnik

#humans #ingenuity #intelligence #mortality #smarts

Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it. ↗

— William James

#intellect #spirituality #intelligence

Intelligence is power; it is the flame behind the spark of intrigue ↗

— Tobsha Learner

#politics #power #intelligence

I guess the two Manifesto, Communicating Vessels, Mad Love, and some of his poetry made a significant mark on me but as far as bringing a literary element into the music I see it as a much broader assimilation. ↗

— Trevor Dunn

#assimilation #bringing #broader #communicating #element

But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension. ↗

— Peter Watts

#intelligence #pattern-matching #equality

You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something...I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That's what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!' ↗

— David Keirsey

#personality #psychology #intelligence

All over the world there are enormous numbers of smart, even gifted, people who harbor a passion for science. But that passion is unrequited. Surveys suggest that some 95 percent of Americans are “scientifically illiterate.” That’s just the same fraction as those African Americans, almost all of them slaves, who were illiterate just before the Civil War—when severe penalties were in force for anyone who taught a slave to read. Of course there’s a degree of arbitrariness about any determination of illiteracy, whether it applies to language or to science. But anything like 95 percent illiteracy is extremely serious. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#literacy #science #social-conditions #education

There are Seven Deadly Social Sins: Politics without principle. Wealth without work. Commerce without morality. Pleasure without conscience. Education without character. Science without humility. Worship without sacrifice. ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#deadly-sins #education #gandhi #pleasure #politics

I couldn't stand being identified by my sexuality, I retaliated by insisting that people regard me for my intellectual worth. My intellect became a form of damage control. ↗

— Leora Tanenbaum

#intelligence #reputation #school #sexuality #slut-shaming