#t

A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#intelligence #solitude #intelligence

I came to realize that I was always looking for myself in the women I loved. I looked at their lovely, clean faces, and saw myself reflected in them. They, on the other hand, looked at me and saw the dirt on my face and, however intelligent and self confident they were, they ended up seeing themselves reflected in me and thinking that they were worse than they were. Please don't let that happen to you. ↗

— Paulo Coelho

#intelligence

The purpose of having the orphans study all these diverse fields was not for them to just become geniuses, but to become polymaths – meaning they would be geniuses in a wide variety of fields. ↗

— James Morcan

#genius #genius-writers #geniuses #higher-intelligence #intelligence

We are all, he says, the sport of destiny. Ah, but not quite. Destiny is an intelligent force, moving with purpose. ↗

— Rafael Sabatini

#fate #scaramouche #intelligence

If you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you. If you are puzzled by what he says, you can save yourself the trouble of thinking by asking him what he means. If, however, you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the extent that you do the work of thinking an analysis yourself. ↗

— Mortimer J. Adler

#intelligence

I’m so smart that I make everyone around me smarter. I do this by being dumber than everybody.
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— Jarod Kintz

#intelligence #iq #smart #smarter #intelligence

With good parody, you have to be smarter that the people you’re parodying. ↗

— Craig Ferguson

#parody #intelligence

She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk ... ↗

— Ann Brashares

#life #life-and-living #old #painful #quiet

Intelligence, Kant reminds, is not so much a result of genius, rather it is a consequence of a determination to use it. ↗

— Michael R. LeGault

#inspirational #intelligence #work #inspirational

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. ↗

— George Orwell

#george-bush #ignorance #intelligence #manipulate #war