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About this quote

What does it mean?
True humility comes from using your intelligence honestly; you cannot be proud when you are fully focused on thinking clearly.
In plain terms
You feel humble when you are really using your brain to think clearly.
What can you take from it?
Intelligence practiced honestly removes pride.

Where it applies

  • intellectual work
  • learning
  • problem solving

Putting it to work

  • focus practice
  • ego reduction
  • learning mindset

Questions to consider

  • When do you feel small?
  • Is thinking humble by nature?

Another view

One can still feel pride in their intelligence after the fact, not just during use.

More from Simone Weil

  1. The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question 'Is what she says true?'

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  2. At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of a…

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  3. No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. c…

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