#ss

George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge ↗

— John le Carré

#british-intelligence #george-smiley #ian-bannon #ian-richardson #moles

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

It isn't stress that makes us fall - it's how we respond to stressful events. ↗

— Wayde Goodall

#stress #intelligence

A man can live on his wits and his balls for only so long. ↗

— Hunter S. Thompson

#intellect #life-lessons #reality #life

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen. ↗

— Diane Setterfield

#intelligence #media #press #intelligence

We all have some screws loose, common sense and intelligence can diminish that ↗

— Doug Brown

#doug-brown #looking-glass-self #intelligence

I went away and cried to the Master of the Universe, "What have you done to me? A mind like this I need for a son? A heart I need for a son, a soul I need for a son, compassion I want from my son, righteousness, mercy, strength to suffer and carry pain, that I want from my son, not a mind without a soul! ↗

— Chaim Potok

#compassion #hasidic-judaism #intelligence #judaism #parenting

No intelligent idea can gain general acceptance unless some stupidity is mixed in with it. Collective thought is stupid because it's collective. Nothing passes into the realm of the collective without leaving at the border -like a toll- most of the intelligence it contained. In youth we're twofold. Our innate intelligence, which may be considerable, coexists with the stupidity of our inexperience, which forms a second, lesser intelligence. Only later on do the two unite. That's why youth always blunders - not because of its inexperience, but because of it's non-unity. Today the only course left for the man of superior intelligence is abdication. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#inspirational

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us. ↗

— P.D. James

#intelligent-life #pessimism #intelligence

[It] began to seem amazing how often it was assumed that having a vagina automatically meant I was less intelligent, talented, capable, and interesting than the world's least interesting human being who happened to have a penis. ↗

— Francine Prose

#essay #feminisim #intelligence