Wisdom vs Intelligence

Often people misregarded wisdom as an synonym to intelligence, but I remembered clearly what I'd listened from one of my most respected primary school teacher: a wise person is always intelligent, but the converse may not true (sorry I've studied too much of discrete maths).

Wise people are always open to opinions, as long as the opinions are logic, objective and make sense; intelligent people may not be.

Wise people always think about how their actions will affect others, and will not commit actions that will negatively affect the people around him; intelligent people may not be.

Wise people can handle uncertainties and problems appropriately; intelligent people, although have the knowledge, do not necessarily know how to practically overcome such situations.

In general, wise people is the one who knows how to apply what he has learnt rationally and appropriately into his daily life and tasks, while there exists some intelligent people who doesn't know how to use his knowledge. And such people are whom I look down upon, since they're really poor executioners.

In university life, such characteristics of human are easily shown in group assignments. Some, although not really the smartest of the class, can do their assignment really well since they know how to apply their wisdom into their work; on the other hand, some, although very smart, never really know what the assignment they are doing want and thus always ended up with a bad effort.

I would always respect the former one since they're real talents of doing big tasks. The latter will always be small pawns unless one day they realise the correct way of applying their knowledge. Till then, they're just wasting their smartness.

Remember, this old Chinese idiom is very true: reading blindly can never better than thinking wisely. And that is the reason why I never chose to read insanely everyday like what the leaders of the class do (I always choose the different path than others =P ).