"Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong."
-- Paul Graham
"In the same way that we need statesmen to spare us the abjection of exercising power, we need scholars to spare us the abjection of learning."
-- Jean Baudrillard
"Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it."
-- Charles Murray
"The popular media can only handle ideas expressible in proto-language, not ideas requiring nested phrase-structure syntax for their exposition."
-- Ben Goertzel
"The best part about math is that, if you have the right answer and someone disagrees with you, it really is because they're stupid."
-- Quotes from Honors Linear Algebra
"Long-Term Capital Management had faith in diversification. Its history serves as ample notification that eggs in different baskets can and do all break at the same time."
-- Craig L. Howe
"Accountability is about one person taking responsibility. If two people are accountable for the same decision, no one is really accountable."
-- Glyn Holton
Thankfully. High-IQ children know they are high-IQ; if they can't figure out how smart they are, they aren't very smart. They don't need to be told they're special, though. We need people who live intelligently rather than live for the purpose of being intelligent.
Telling an intelligent person they are obliged to use their intelligence in service to others is the quickest way of convincing him or her not to.
That's quite true. Most vegetarians have adopted their eating habits out of health related, not ethical, reasons. Those with ethical concerns are "vegans", and their diets usually go beyond vegetarian restrictions. This, of course, is a gross generalization.