#rio

Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper. ↗

— Wilkie Collins

#control #dispute #empowerment #intelligence #men

Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark. ↗

— Stefan Zweig

#intelligence #mystery #puzzle #trail #intelligence

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. ↗

— Mortimer J. Adler

#children #curiosity #knowledge #intelligence

The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies. ↗

— Mortimer J. Adler

#children #curiosity #knowledge #philosophers #philosophy

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

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient. ↗

— Eugene S. Wilson

#intelligence #learning #obstacles #quest #resolute

Harriet was silent. She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamoured, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of utter inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realised that there was, after all, something god-like about him. He could control a horse. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#hero-worship #horses #love #riding #superiority

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. ↗

— George Orwell

#bound #disregard #fair #fair play #hatred

Envy suggests inferiority. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#inferiority #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