Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.
Interpretation
Intelligence and education alone are insufficient without compassion and empathy.
This quote emphasizes that true intelligence and education should be accompanied by human affection and understanding. Without these emotional qualities, knowledge alone lacks value and fails to contribute meaningfully to the human experience.
In practice
During a speech on the importance of emotional intelligence in the workplace.
Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.
How can I make him understand that he did not create me? He makes the same mistake as the others when they look at a feeble-minded person and laugh because they don't understand there are human feelings involved.
Im like a man whos been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.
No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.
The path I choose through the maze makes me what I am. I am not only a thing, but also a way of being--one of many ways--and knowing the paths I have followed and the ones left to take will help me understand what I am becoming.
How strange it is that people of honest feelings and sensibilty, who would not take advantage of a man born without arms or legs or eyesβhow such people think nothing of abusing a man with low intelligence.
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying, when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the feeling you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have."
Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
The weak overcomes the strong. The soft overcomes the hard. Everybody in the world knows this, still nobody makes use of it.
My entire life consisted of musings, calculations, practical works, and trials. Many questions remain unanswered; many works are incomplete or unpublished. The most important things still lie ahead.
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