[N]ot the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage, and wisdom is supposed to consist not in seeing further than other people, but in not seeing so far.
John Stuart Mill, ‘Perfectibility’, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 26, p. 429
If I had doubts of being able to light up a room by quicksilver intelligence, something I both envied and suspected, I was confident of having an ability to find my way to clear things of my own to say, some of which might produce a longer light. But what was definitely also needed in order to produce these goods was the onward marching.
Ted Honderich, Philosopher: A Kind of Life, London, 2001, p. 96