"All of the people I've known that I consider brilliant have also had an amazing amount of humility about what they didn't know, and have been fast to praise th

"All of the people I've known that I consider brilliant have also had an amazing amount of humility about what they didn't know, and have been fast to praise the achievements of others." I agree. I think this has something to do with the fact that a "learning attitude" is actually necessary to become brilliant in a field. If you haven't jigged your brain up to be really open and accepting to new ideas, you become too rigid quickly fall behind. By admitting what you don't know & praising achievements of others, you're not just doing the people around you a favour by being pleasant, you're also setting yourself up to become smarter. I like how with this particular quality, "social" considerations (ie. being liked) overlap strongly with "mental/learning" considerations (ie. you become smarter). You win both ways. I've definitely erred on this one too -- misjudged situations and thought they called for too much forcefulness/rigidity. Leadership and openness aren't mutually exclusive, but sometimes people make them out to be (eg/ "a good leader doesn't change his mind"). Probably because if you are in politics, you frequently have to abandon your intellectual ideals for pragmatic results. (This is the reason why Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is one of my favorite books. He rose to the greatest position of power in the world of his day, without losing his ability to be thoughtful and aware, at least with himself.)