To young people born under the weird planet of the SAT, intelligence was equated with agility, with raw acuity. It produced a certain sort of person of which I was a typical specimen: the mental contortionist, able to rise to almost every challenge placed before him, except the challenge of real self-knowledge.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the disconnect between perceived intelligence and true self-awareness, particularly in young individuals who excel academically.
Walter Kirn’s quote delves into the societal definition of intelligence as agility and quick thinking, often celebrated in academic settings like the SAT. However, he highlights a more profound challenge—true self-knowledge—which many intelligent individuals, despite their abilities to excel in external challenges, struggle to achieve. This suggests that being intellectually adept does not automatically equate to knowing oneself deeply and navigating the complexities of personal identity.
In practice
In a commencement speech to inspire graduates to seek more than just academic success.
Size matters in fiction, but so does lack of size. Everything else being equal, fat novels tend to be perceived as serious, very thin ones as more honest, more real. Writers address these age-old expectations by filling their big books with philosophy and cramming their little ones with feeling.
In America, to be ID'd - sorted, tagged, and permanently filed - is to lose a bit of one's soul. To die a little. This sounds like a subtle, poetic notion. It's not. In American legal and cultural tradition, one essential privilege of citizenship is not having to prove it on demand.
Obstacles are our friends: they teach us where we're stuck.
The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart.
Take one thing with another, and the world is a pretty good sort of a world, and it is our duty to make the best of it, and be thankful.
Good men and bad men differ radically. Bad men never appreciate kindness shown them, but wise men appreciate and are grateful. Wise men try to express their appreciation and gratitude by some return of kindness, not only to their benefactor, but to everyone else
Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.
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