Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intelligence. Show all posts

Monday, December 11, 2017

Post #2466

In the scales of the destinies brawn will never weigh so much as brain.
—James Russell Lowell

Friday, May 31, 2013

Post #1266

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
—Mark Van Doren

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Post #1229

There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
—Niccolò Machiavelli

Friday, July 13, 2012

Post #1003

The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.
—George Steiner

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Friday, December 16, 2011

Post #802

There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the mind.
—Napoleon Bonaparte

Monday, July 26, 2010

Post #297

No mind is thoroughly well organized that is deficient in a sense of humor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Post #253

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering.
—William James

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Post #108

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
—Albert Einstein

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Post #86

Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.
—Thomas Robert Dewar

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Post #41

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
—George S. Patton

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Post #21

What is the hardest task in the world? To think.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Penalty of Leadership

In every field of human endeavor, he that is first must perpetually live in the white light of publicity. Whether the leadership be vested in a man or in a manufactured product, emulation and envy are ever at work. In art, in literature, in music, in industry, the reward and the punishment are always the same. The reward is widespread recognition; the punishment, fierce denial and detraction. When a man’s work becomes a standard for the whole world, it also becomes a target for the shafts of the envious few. If his work be mediocre, he will be left severely alone – if he achieve a masterpiece, it will set a million tongues a -wagging. Jealousy does not protrude its forked tongue at the artist who produces a commonplace painting. Whatsoever you write, or paint, or play, or sing, or build, no one will strive to surpass or to slander you unless your work be stamped with the seal of genius. Long, long after a great work or a good work has been done, those who are disappointed or envious, continue to cry out that it cannot be done. Spiteful little voices in the domain of art were raised against our own Whistler as a mountebank, long after the big world had acclaimed him its greatest artistic genius. Multitudes flocked to Bayreuth to worship at the musical shrine of Wagner, while the little group of those whom he had dethroned and displaced argued angrily that he was no musician at all. The little world continued to protest that Fulton could never build a steamboat, while the big world flocked to the river banks to see his boat steam by. The leader is assailed because he is a leader, and the effort to equal him is merely added proof of that leadership. Failing to equal or to excel, the follower seeks to depreciate and to destroy – but only confirms once more the superiority of that which he strives to supplant. There is nothing new in this. It is as old as the world and as old as human passions – envy, fear, greed, ambition, and the desire to surpass. And it all avails nothing. If the leader truly leads, he remains – the leader. Master-poet, master-painter, master-workman, each in his turn is assailed, and each holds his laurels through the ages. That which is good or great makes itself known, no matter how loud the clamor of denial. That which deserves to live — lives.
written by Theodore F. MacManus

A deadly viper once bit a hole snipe's hide; But 'twas the viper, not the snipe, that died.

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El Paso, Texas, United States
Native Texan · Navy Veteran · Various Scars and Tattoos · No Talent yet a Character

One From the Archives

Post #1234

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied...

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