Being smarter gives you a tailwind throughout life. People who are more intelligent earn more, live longer, get divorced less, are less likely to get addicted to alcohol and tobacco, and their children live longer.
Interpretation
Intelligence provides various advantages in life, including better health and financial stability.
This quote by Steven Pinker emphasizes the multifaceted benefits of intelligence throughout an individual's life. It suggests that being smarter not only leads to higher earnings and longer life expectancy but also to healthier relationships and better outcomes for future generations, highlighting the profound impact of intelligence on personal and societal well-being.
In practice
This quote can be used in a graduation speech to encourage students to value their education.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic self-hood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks--we will also find our path of authentic service in the world.
You grow most in your areas of greatest strength. You will improve the most, be the_x000D_ _x000D_ most creative, be the most inquisitive, and bounce back the fastest in those areas_x000D_ _x000D_ where you have already shown some natural advantage over everyone else your strengths. This doesn't mean you should ignore your weaknesses. It just means_x000D_ _x000D_ you'll grow most where you're already strong.
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don't let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.
I'm very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.
It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.
Well, normally Iβm against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.β β Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.