Knowledge and Acting on it
O you who carry knowledge around with you; are you only carrying it around with you ? For surely knowledge belongs to who ever knows and then acts accordingly, so that his action corresponds to his knowledge. There will be a people who will carry knowledge around with them, but it will not pass beyond their shoulders. Their inner most thoughts will contradict what they display in public, and their actions will contradict what they know.
The purity and nobility of knowledge
When a dead person is placed in his grave, four kinds of fire will cover him, but then the prayer will come and put one of them out, and the fast will come and put another one of them out, and then charity will come and put another one out, and knowledge will come and put the forth one out, and it will say : ‘ If I had come sooner, I would a have put all of them out, and given you delight for I am with you now, and you’ll not see anything else distressing. ‘
Imam ‘Ali on Intellect
- A person’s intellect becomes apparent through his dealings, and a man’s character is known by the way he exercises authority.
- The intellect is a king and characteristics are its subjects, so if it is weak in governing them, disorder takes place.
- The intellect is better than desire, for the intellect makes you a king over your destiny, and desire makes you a slave of your destiny.
- The intellect is a natural disposition which learns from experience.
- The intellect is what arrives at what is correct through reasoning, and recognizes what has not yet happened through what has already taken place.
- Use your intellect to understand something when you hear about it-the intellect that examines, that is, and not just the intellect that repeats what it hears, for surely there are many who repeat the knowledge that they hear, and there are few who examine it.
- The one who has an intellect longs to be like the righteous people so that he can be of one of them, and he loves them so that he can be united with them in his love, even if he falls short in emulating their actions.
- The one who has an intellect does not openly display it except in one of two situations: when he is furthest away from seeking something in the world, and when he is furthest away from abandoning it.
- Surely hated adversity has final objectives in which it will inevitably end, so the one who has an intellect should try to sleep over it until this happens, for surely any attempt to stop it before it has come to an end will only intensify that hated diversity even more.
- The first opinion of the person of intellect is the last opinion of an ignorant person.
- The one who has an intellect finds harshness of life amongst persons of intellect more agreeable than a life of ease amongst the foolish.
