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.
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.
I sometimes still go out hunting for bad weather, flying low in simple airplanes to explore the inner reaches of the clouds. Less experienced pilots occasionally join me, not to learn formal lessons about weather flying, but with a more advanced purpose in mind - to accompany me in the slow accumulation of experience through circumstances that never repeat in a place that defies mastery.
You will be at your best forever, Even now you have good moments. Occasional glimpses of your heavenly self. When you change your baby's diaper, forgive your boss's temper, tolerate your spouse's moodiness, you display traces of saintliness.
Those who exert the first influence upon the mind have the greatest power.
It is so powerful when we can leave behind our ordinary identities, no longer think of ourselves primarily as a conductor, or writer, or salesclerk, and go to a supportive environment to deeply immerse in meditation practice.
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