Intelligence plus character-that is the goal of true education.
People don't get better, they just get smarter. When you get smarter you don't stop pulling the wings off flies, you just think of better reasons for doing it.
The wise man avoids evil by anticipating it.
The wicked are always surprised to find that the good can be clever.
It is much more intelligent, more practical, to be good rather than evil.
If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?
A long while ago an eager group of reformers wrote to me asking if I could suggest anything that would improve the morals of the American people. I replied that the trouble with the American people in general was not lack of morals but lack of brains.
If the devil doesn't exist... how do you explain that some people are a lot worse than they're smart enough to be?
Evil is a source of moral intelligence in the sense that we need to learn from our shadow, from our dark side, in order to be good.
Intelligence is a moral category.
Intelligence, guided by kindness, is the highest wisdom. . . .
The intellect has only one failing, which, to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience.
There can be goodness without much intelligence - but it seems to me that perfect intelligence and perfect goodness must go together.
