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.
None so little enjoy themselves, and are such burdens to themselves, as those who have nothing to do. Only the active have the true relish of life.
A mind of moderate capacity which closely pursues one study must infallibly arrive at great proficiency in that study.
I think I'll just go down and have some pudding and wait for it all to turn up - it always does in the end.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Be slow to speak, and only after having first listened quietly, so that you may understand the meaning, leanings, and wishes of those who do speak. Thus you will better know when to speak and when to be silent.
What can we put into the hands of people under oppressive regimes to help them? For me, a big part of it is information, knowledge - the ability to defeat propaganda by understanding it.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.