Consequently the student who is devoid of talent will derive no more profit from this work than barren soil from a treatise on agriculture.
QuintilianRead
Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Natural talent is essential for effectively applying technical knowledge.
Quintilian's quote emphasizes the importance of innate abilities in conjunction with learned skills. While technical rules and knowledge can provide a framework, without the natural gifts or talents to utilize them, such rules become ineffective. This highlights the balance between education and inherent aptitude in achieving mastery in any field.
Themes
TalentSkillsEducationTechnicalInnateAbilities
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on education, one could use this quote to underline the necessity of nurturing talent alongside teaching technical skills.
More from Quintilian
All quotes βAs regards parents, I should like to see them as highly educated as possible, and I do not restrict this remark to fathers alone.
QuintilianRead
Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.
QuintilianRead
A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.
QuintilianRead
An evil-speaker differs from an evil-doer only in the want of opportunity.
QuintilianRead
It is the nurse that the child first hears, and her words that he will first attempt to imitate.
QuintilianRead
Similar quotes
One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
William OslerRead
I began going to juvenile prisons. And some of these kids face some very, very tough lives. How do they handle these lives? Do they even know that if their life is bad, that they're still OK? Do they know that? Do they know that someone is thinking the same way that they're thinking?
Walter Dean MyersRead
In order to dream so far, is it enough to read? Isn't it necessary to write? Write as in our schoolboy past, in those days when, as Bonnoure says, the letters wrote themselves one by one, either in their gibbosity or else in their pretentious elegance? In those days, spelling was a drama, our drama of culture at work in the interior of a word.
Gaston BachelardRead
It is time to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are - or else to close them down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general educating in the practice of management.
Henry MintzbergRead
There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge... observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.
Denis DiderotRead
I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the same time, as a low-income trans girl of color, there were so many things that I didn't have access to. I didn't have access to a great education. I didn't have access to affordable healthcare.
Janet MockRead