A Quote by Wendell Berry

To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)
I think there's more support today. I think there's better understanding today. And there's a better appreciation for the fact that if any community is going to prosper, if any community is going to be seen at its best, that the women in that community have to be viewed as equally as important as the men. And [women] have to be able to live outside of boundaries that are placed on them because of their gender. As well as their race or their religion.
Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. Violence does not mean the emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of combating the cause of fear. Nonviolence, on the other hand, has no cause for fear. The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice of the highest type in order to be free from fear. He recks not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life.
What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!
I think the best developers can learn any language; if they are a good developer, they can learn whatever. But the raw talent, the ability to learn it and do it and demonstrate the ability is helpful.
Obama found a lot of people that think just like he does, and he put them in the intelligence community. Can you imagine? When you think of the intelligence community, don't you think of super patriots, don't you think of people out there even risking their lives to defend and protect the Constitution and the people of this country and this country itself as founded? No. That's not the kind of people Obama put at the CIA.
Fluid intelligence doesn't look much like the capacity to memorise and recite facts, the skills that people have traditionally associated with brainpower.
If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself -- ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity -- before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly.
When I see a young person on a reality show, I don't think, "Oh my God. They could be better." I think, "Oh my God. They are really good for 17. They're going to learn so much!" If they're this good at 17, imagine what they're going to be like at 20.
Violence never quashed violence because if you're equipped to do violence then you'll continue that passage. Let's say Nazis, if Nazis they be, have got a profoundly ugly form of thought and of actions, why match that? Antifa's ugliness is no better than the ugliness of the far right.
But I wound like people to think I was an honest judge and a good judge. And I always tried the reach the best result in every case.
I think any good judge recognizes his or her place in our constitutional government, and that place is not to upset the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives.
I'm prepared to concede that stupidity does not help survival. One must after all understand not to poke a tiger with a stick. But intelligence leads to curiosity, and curiosity has never been a quality that helps one pour his or her genes into the pool. The truth must lie somewhere between. Whatever the reason, it is clearly mediocrity, at best, that lives and breeds.
I feel like there are a lot of people doing a lot of hard work. I think it's too early to judge, and I don't think the gay community is in any way falling short.
I don't want to tell people what to think. I'm the least qualified person in the world for that. If I'd go around pretending to be the expert on everything, I'd become Dan Brown, and I don't understand that. We all do our research if we're good writers, and we all work hard to get it right, but that doesn't mean we're experts in the field. The best we can do is challenge people to learn the facts themselves.
Stupidity—The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.
If you have a friend, what's the best way you can experience her beauty? It's to really accept her. She's weird in this way, I accept it. She's hard to talk to, I accept it. Then that person eventually will come all the way out into the sun. I think it's the same way with our talent. We say, "Look, I'm not going to judge you. I'm going to try to use you in the very best way."
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