Last updated: March 17, 2020

As the Greek philosopher Aristotle asserted in his Nicomachean Ethics more than two millennia ago, intellect is the highest thing in a person and contemplation is the highest activity of being human.

Knowledge enriches intellect, and silence fosters contemplation. Hence, great societies and great people since the beginning of human civilization have eulogized knowledge and silence. But in today’s society, knowledge and silence have become stigmatized. Today, educators are more concerned about teaching social and emotional skills than cultivating intellect or imparting subject knowledge. Pop psychology and self-help literature of the past century convinced many that success in life is simply a matter of having an attractive personality or plentiful social skills, and that a quiet, intellectual disposition is an impediment to success. Not many realize that today’s popular educational and psychological attitudes are in fact anti-intellectual. These attitudes have directly or indirectly fostered a derision of books and intellectual inclination. Many children and adults have now come to view intellectual inclination as undesirable. Anti-intellectual attitudes in schools and the wider society reduce the effectiveness of educational systems and diminish humanity’s potential.

Society today faces significant challenges. Modern transport systems reliant on internal combustion engines are slow and polluting. Manned space exploration beyond earth’s orbit has stalled. No new class of antibiotics has become available in the past three decades, and an alarming trend of antibiotic resistance has now arisen, which threatens to undo almost a century of medical progress. Moreover, the rise in population has made many intractable problems, such as environmental degradation and the loss of biodiversity, even worse. Despite the drastic reduction in the proportion of the world’s population living in poverty, the absolute number of people living in extreme poverty was until recently as high as it was in the 19th century. With the rise of religious and political extremism around the world, the prospects for large-scale violence and wars have again flared up.

We are now witnessing a widespread adoption of technology in everyday life. The sight of people, young and old, eagerly entertaining themselves on their large screen phones is now so ubiquitous that it ought to make one wonder whether this is all a sign of empowerment or mere decadence. Despite the ubiquity of technology in modern life, most people neither understand technology nor have a favorable inclination toward learning things of an intellectual or technical nature. In today’s society, science and technology professionals are derided as nerds and geeks. Among the masses, there is a growing disdain for intellectual inclination. The widening cultural gap between the masses and intellectual elites will only serve to exacerbate inequality and social tensions in the future. Moreover, an intellectually mediocre public will struggle to make prudent decisions about the burgeoning technological advancement of the future. Modern society is woefully ill-prepared to handle the oncoming technological disruption. Millions of jobs, especially low skilled ones, could become obsolete in the coming decades. Inequality may grow further, and social discontent may rise. The solution is to prepare the population for the intellectual demands of the coming age. However, anti-intellectual attitudes are now rampant in schools and in the wider society.

Today, the glitz and glamor of modern technology paints an overly optimistic picture of human civilization. A civilization that has lost its intellectual underpinnings may still retain a thriving material culture for a time, but it is merely a facade that belies the rot within.

Throughout history, civilizations have risen and fallen. But with the capacity to destroy itself, human society has now reached a critical juncture in its evolution when a regression into chaos could be catastrophic. Anti-intellectual attitudes pose a great threat to humanity’s existence. Today, anti-intellectual attitudes have become pervasive among the public and even in academia.

(This is a 70,000-word long-form article. It is recommended to read this article in the form of an e-book. E-books in reader-friendly formats are available on the author’s website.)

The purpose of this long-form article is to apprise the reader of the merits of an intellectual life.

For the list of references, please visit www.rs2.website/references/

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Chapter 1: High-Achieving People

Contrary to popular belief, qualities like introversion and a love of books are extremely common among high-achieving people. Intellectual inclination, along with hard work, perseverance and other qualities, plays a very important role in determining a person’s prospects in life. In general, it is thinkers who achieve eminence in life.

1.1 Businesspeople and Entrepreneurs

The widespread belief that success in life comes primarily from qualities like eloquence, sociability, and self-confidence has no basis in truth. Today, such a belief has been instrumental in nurturing a widespread skepticism of intellect and disdain for intellectual inclination. Because wealth is the yardstick of success for many, there is no better way to dispel the myth than by examining the lives of those who are extremely wealthy. Consider the profiles of Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu, Warren Buffett, Amancio Ortega, and Larry Ellison, who were the wealthiest people in the world according to the Forbes 2015 rankings.

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, was an extremely shy child who loved to read. In his childhood, he read the World Book Encyclopedia in its entirety. At age eleven, he amazed the minister at his church when he memorized and flawlessly recited the Sermon on the Mount passages from the Bible. In school, he excelled in mathematics and science. He built Microsoft and is now one of the wealthiest people in the world. Despite his busy schedule, Bill Gates continues to be a voracious reader. In 2016, Bill Gates claimed that he had been reading avidly throughout his life even when he was busy running Microsoft and his philanthropic organization. He says, “I’ve been reading about a book a week on average since I was a kid. Even when my schedule is out of control, I carve out a lot of time for reading.” In popular media, Bill Gates and other leaders of the technology industry have been at the receiving end of the label “nerd,” a term often used pejoratively to denote shy and bookish children. Not many know that Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller — often considered the wealthiest capitalists in history — were nerds. Many successful people are just like Bill Gates. As children, they were introverted; as adults, they have a reserved disposition and lead a private life.

Carlos Slim Helu, the second wealthiest man in the world in 2015 according to Forbes magazine, is a Mexican tycoon with business interests in diverse fields including telecommunications, manufacturing, and food. He leads a private life. A columnist familiar with Slim describes him, “He’s a loner. He doesn’t have much of a social life . . . He doesn’t attend fashion events. He’s a lousy speaker, shy, and he doesn’t have a good sense of humor.” Slim is an avid reader. According to his biographer Diego Enrique Osorno, Slim’s personal library is one of his favorite places. In school, Slim was the top student in his graduating class. While studying engineering at university, he was so good in his studies that he was tasked with teaching his fellow students. Slim also published a thesis related to the optimum allocation of resources. Being proficient in mathematics, he likes to pore over the balance sheets and company reports. To an interviewer, Slim once commented in jest, “The numbers, they talk to me.” Most successful businesspeople are like Slim. They rely on their intellectual acumen rather than slick talk. A businessperson who tries to cut deals by slick talk but does not have the inclination to research the market or read the fine print of the deal is foolish and unlikely to ever become successful.

A person’s appearance seldom matters to their success or eminence in life. Not surprisingly, people such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are known as careless dressers. Others such as Steve Jobs were neglectful of their appearance in youth and in their later years, took to wearing the same style of clothes to avoid the hassle of choosing clothes. About Slim, a newspaper publisher commented, “I had dinner with him one night, and he had a hole in his shirtsleeve that you could put your fist through.”

Warren Buffett is the third wealthiest man on the Forbes list of 2015. He is the most successful investor in the world. Biographer Alice Schroeder says in her book that Buffet was extremely timid and socially inept in his childhood. “He was shy, hopelessly shy, and girls his own age terrified him.” According to Buffett’s biography, despite his excellent subject knowledge, nineteen-year-old Buffett’s admission into Harvard Business School was rejected because he was an introverted, nervous young man who “looked about sixteen and emotionally was about nine.”

In his childhood, he was interested in mathematics and spent countless hours reading books. His biographer reports that Buffett loved to memorize general knowledge and trivia. “His parents and their friends — who called him ‘Warreny’ — got a kick out of his party trick of naming state capitals. By fifth grade he had immersed himself in the 1939 World Almanac, which quickly became his favorite book. He memorized the population of every city.” In another anecdote, he memorized a “twenty-five-cent book about the 1938 baseball season” his grandfather bought him.

As an adult, he works alone and spends most of his time simply reading and thinking (80 percent of his working day by his own estimates). He says of his typical workday, “I just sit in my office and read all day.” Buffett’s advice for success in investing is to read 500 pages every day. He claims, “That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.” Buffett and his business partner Charles Munger are said to be very much alike. Both are reputed to be men of great integrity. They regard “rationality and honesty as the highest virtues.” In their business life, they caution themselves against “quickened pulses and self-delusion.” Munger says, “Neither Warren nor I is smart enough to make the decisions with no time to think.” He adds, “We make actual decisions very rapidly, but that’s because we’ve spent so much time preparing ourselves by quietly sitting and reading and thinking.” Munger’s children call their father “a book with legs.”

Amancio Ortega is the fourth wealthiest man in the world according to the Forbes 2015 rankings. He owns the Spanish clothing retailer Zara. Ortega is known for being fiercely private. He shuns social appearances and refuses all interview requests. According to the Fortune magazine, no published photograph of Ortega had ever existed before 1999, despite his long successful career. Media often labels him a recluse.

Larry Ellison, the fifth wealthiest man in 2015, is the founder of Oracle. According to Mike Wilson’s biography of Ellison, he neither socialized nor played much team sports in school:

At South Shore High school, he was hardly a big man on campus; people hardly knew he existed. He joined no school sponsored clubs, played no varsity sports, apparently did not distinguish himself in any way. ‘He was very quiet, very withdrawn and not all in the mainstream’ [according to the valedictorian of Ellison’s class].

A friend from Ellison’s youth described him as “always inside his own head.” Although he did not excel academically in school, his biographers report that he read voraciously. As a child, he was interested in mathematics and science. He was the science student of the year at the University of Illinois where he studied. Despite having no formal training in computers, he taught himself programming and built a flourishing technology company.

As an adult, Larry Ellison continues to read voraciously and still maintains an avid interest in science. Journalist Bryan Burrough notes, “Like Gates, who reads widely in biochemistry and physics, Ellison maintains avid interests in areas of science that have little to do with computers.” Biographer Julian Guthrie says, “Larry was a voracious reader who spent a great deal of time studying science and technology, but his favorite subject was history. He learned more about human nature, management, and leadership by reading history than by reading books about business.” Ellison is also known for his great admiration for Japanese gardens — serene, quiet places ideal for contemplation. Ellison’s homes and gardens are built in the Japanese style. During Oracle’s early years, Ellison preferred to work from home rather than commute to the office.

Successful businesspeople are neither inveterate multitaskers, nor are they eager social networkers. About matters they care about, they focus intensely and passionately. In running their business, successful businessmen prefer to focus on a few but important matters. Larry Ellison says, “My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you devote all your time to those and forget everything else. If you try to do all thousand things, answer all thousand phone calls, you will dilute your efforts in those areas that are really essential.”

Popular media likes to portray Larry Ellison and other successful entrepreneurs as extroverted salesmen. Larry Ellison is known for his assertive personality and love for outdoor activities. Although he may be an extrovert in such matters, multiple biographers attest that Ellison is also socially reticent by nature. Ellison has little interest in socializing and leads a very private life. Biographer Mike Wilson writes that, despite his colorful speeches and public posturing, Ellison is “a fundamentally shy man.” In his youth, reading about Winston Churchill — who was also shy — reassured Ellison that even great personalities have such weaknesses. Another biographer Matthew Symonds reiterates that Ellison is shy and has “relatively, few close friends.” According to biographer Julian Guthrie: “His favorite Japanese saying was, ‘your garden is not complete until there is nothing else you can take out of it.’ To Larry, it meant that if he had forty friends it was probably too many. It was a reminder to spend time with the people who mattered, and on the things that were important.” Guthrie also portrays the philosophical side of Ellison’s personality that is rarely acknowledged in the media: “Larry closed his eyes and listened to the sounds. He was a Shintoist by choice, finding God in nature. He worshiped the sunrise in Kyoto, cherry blossoms in spring, maple trees in the fall, and the strength of the redwoods at home.”

For the sake of brevity, lives of other wealthy people farther down the Forbes list will not be examined here. However, this book will now consider the lives of two of America’s Gilded Age tycoons — Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller — arguably the wealthiest capitalists in modern history.

Andrew Carnegie had only a little formal education, and from a very young age, he had to work to support his family. A constant theme in his life was his love for books. In his childhood, he borrowed books from the library and carried them with him even when he went to work. In his autobiography, Carnegie says:

Every day’s toil and even the long hours of night service were lightened by the book which I carried about with me and read in the intervals that could be snatched from duty. And the future was made bright by the thought that when Saturday came a new volume could be obtained.

From his childhood, he strove to cultivate a good memory. According to biographer David Nasaw, during his short formal schooling, young Carnegie stood out from other children “for his prodigious memory skills.” While working as a telegraph messenger boy, he tried to memorize the complex street map of Pittsburgh city and its businesses.

Carnegie was very grateful to his benefactor Colonel James Anderson whose library provided him with books to read in childhood. In his autobiography, Carnegie says:

Books which it would have been impossible for me to obtain elsewhere were, by his wise generosity, placed within my reach; and to him I owe a taste for literature which I would not exchange for all the millions that were ever amassed by man. Life would be quite intolerable without it. Nothing contributed so much to keep my companions and myself clear of low fellowship and bad habits as the beneficence of the good Colonel. Later, when fortune smiled upon me, one of my first duties was the erection of a monument to my benefactor.

Reading books was a favorite pastime throughout his life. In his childhood, he had a public spat with a librarian when his library fees were unjustly increased. In his adult life, Carnegie spent as much time in literary and intellectual pursuits as with his ever growing business. According to biographer Nasaw, “His ultimate goal was to establish himself as a man of letters, as well known and respected for his writing and intellect as for his ability to make money.” Carnegie wrote acclaimed literary works. Nasaw says:

With more free time and money in his pocket, Carnegie was able to indulge himself in his favorite pastime: reading and in preparing himself for the literary career that had long been his dream. In childhood, he had had to rely on the kindness of others for reading material. A rich man now, he could indulge himself in buying and subscribing to books and journals.

In his later years, Carnegie retired from business and dedicated the rest of his life to philanthropy and literature. With his enormous fortune, he founded more than 2500 public libraries. He is often called the “Patron Saint of Libraries.” Carnegie says in his autobiography:

It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution. I am sure that the future of those libraries I have been privileged to found will prove the correctness of this opinion. For if one boy in each library district, by having access to one of these libraries, is half as much benefited as I was by having access to Colonel Anderson’s four hundred well-worn volumes, I shall consider they have not been established in vain. “As the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.” The treasures of the world which books contain were opened to me at the right moment. The fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives nothing for nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves. There is no escape from this.

Although most children like to while away time with idle talk, intelligent and thoughtful children thirst for serious, intellectual discussions. In his childhood, young Carnegie befriended intellectually inclined children with whom he engaged in debates on serious matters. He also ensured that he stayed away from bad company. In his childhood, he was referred to as “an honest little fellow” by a local newspaper. Carnegie recalls his eighteenth birthday, “I do not believe, up to that time, I had ever spoken a bad word in my life and seldom heard one.” Biographer Nasaw says of young Carnegie:

At fourteen, Andy [Andrew] Carnegie, it appeared, was also something of a prig, which set him apart from his comrades. He did not enjoy roughhousing or sexually charged banter or dirty stories of any kind. One of the boys he worked alongside, Tom David, declared years later that he had always thought Andy was “religiously inclined.” Why else, David reasoned, would he recoil so from “salacious stories”? Though already the family breadwinner, Andy remained very much a mama’s boy, afraid of misbehaving lest his mother think less of him. His Sunday school classmate William Macgregor had noticed this years before in Dunfermline, when he observed that Andra [Andrew] “never kicked up rumpuses,” like the other boys, perhaps because he was too “much under the control of his mother.”

A contemporary of Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller is often considered the wealthiest man in modern history. Rockefeller once controlled a substantial portion of global oil refining. Rockefeller’s business and personal life were characterized by “quiet persistence” and a “slow, ponderous style.” As a child, he was extremely quiet and sensitive. Biographer Ron Chernow writes that “he was a studious boy, grave, reserved, never noisy or given to boisterous play.” According to Chernow, Rockefeller’s quiet and thoughtful nature was amply evident to others in his childhood:

To other people, he often seemed abstracted, and they remembered him with a deadpan face trudging along country roads, lost in thought, as if unraveling deep problems. “He was a quiet boy,” said one Moravia resident. “He seemed always to be thinking.” . . . Rockefeller frequently hugged his slate to his chest, a pose that hinted at his guarded nature.

In school and in his early business life, Rockefeller had the reputation of being a “slow” person; some considered him “a rather dim-witted dolt who would never rise in the world.” Despite being a slow learner, he was patient and persistent in his studies. Biographer Chernow quotes a tutor as saying: “I have no recollection of John excelling at anything. I do remember he worked hard at everything; not talking much, and studying with great industry.” In childhood, much of his time was devoted to books, music, and church. His mother Eliza trained him to think well before rushing to act. She frequently advised him with the saying, “We will let it simmer,” which Rockefeller frequently employed in his business life. At the age of sixteen, Rockefeller dropped out of high school to support his poor family.

Patience and persistence characterized Rockefeller’s personality. Perhaps nothing exemplifies Rockefeller’s persistence better than the story of his first job search. Young Rockefeller spent every morning until late afternoon, except Sundays, walking the streets of Cleveland looking for a job. He grew footsore from constantly walking up and down the hard unpaved streets in the sweltering heat of summer. As the job market was weak at the time, he was met with a disappointing response wherever he went. But Rockefeller was persistent. He had drawn up a list of major firms in the city, and when he had finished visiting all the firms, he started again from the top of his list, visiting firms two or three times. He finally found a job as a bookkeeper.

Rockefeller is now regarded as one of the greatest philanthropists in history. Even in his youth, he was charitable. (In business, however, he was a monopolist, and his business practices were sometimes controversial.) The young Rockefeller was also known for his exactitude. An acquaintance noted, “He was nothing but a clerk, and had little money, and yet he gave something to every organization in the little, old church. He was always very precise about it. If he said that he would give fifteen cents, not a living soul could move him to give a penny more, or a penny less.” According to his business partners, the young Rockefeller was “methodical to an extreme, careful as to details and exacting to a fraction. If there was a cent due us, he wanted it. If there was a cent due a customer, he wanted the customer to have it.” Some early business partners disliked Rockefeller’s exactitude and prudishness. They called him the “Sunday-school superintendent.”

While his business associates found the quiet, serious Rockefeller to be a killjoy, Rockefeller balked at the easygoing nature of his associates. He often felt slighted by colleagues who looked down on him as a humorless, dull clerk. One business partner often taunted him: “What in the world would you have done without me?” Being an extremely quiet man, his personality stood in stark contrast to that of his boisterous father. A colleague commented that “he [John’s father] would crack jokes and have more to say in one conversation than John would utter in a week.”

Not only was Rockefeller quiet by nature, he, being a devout christian, came to regard silence as a foremost virtue. In his adult life, he adopted a studied reserve. He had contempt for those prone to loud, idle talk and easygoing ways. Regarding his wife, biographer Chernow says, “Rockefeller would never have tolerated a noisy woman, and Cettie [his wife] was soft in voice and manner.” Two of his most cherished maxims were “Success comes from keeping the ears open and the mouth closed” and “A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.” According to Chernow, “Rockefeller equated silence with strength: Weak men had loose tongues and blabbed to reporters, while prudent businessmen kept their own counsel.”

With his studied reserve, Rockefeller cultivated an exceptionally calm and composed personality. In his later business life, he became renowned for his unflappable composure. Among his employees and associates, Rockefeller was known for his ability to remain calm and unperturbed even in the most difficult situations. As Chernow says, “the more agitated others became, the calmer he grew.” Rockefeller was a man of quiet authority, and “the quieter he was, the more forceful his presence seemed.” In board meetings, while his business associates debated vigorously, Rockefeller sat indistinguishably among them and listened. In meetings, Rockefeller listened much more than he talked, interjecting only occasionally. “A laconic man, he liked to canvass everyone’s opinion before expressing his own and then often crafted a compromise to maintain cohesion. He was always careful to couch his decisions as suggestions or questions,” writes Chernow.

Rockefeller’s critics, especially those in the press who took aim at his personality, portrayed him as cold and unemotional. But for his employees and associates, he was an exemplary leader. Rockefeller was said to be unfailingly genial and polite in his conduct. His subordinates claim he never “raised his voice, uttered a profane or slang word, or acted discourteously.” Chernow says, “He defied many stereotypes of the overbearing tycoon and generally received excellent reviews from employees who regarded him as fair and benevolent, free of petty temper and dictatorial airs.”

Rockefeller and his wife also disliked socializing. “Shying away from social situations that weren’t safely predictable, they socialized only within a small circle of family members, business associates, and church friends and never went to clubs or dinner parties.”

Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg are some of the most influential business leaders of our time. All of them are known to be introverted or intellectual in personality. Success in endeavors like business requires strategizing and planning ahead. In a free market economy, people who can best cater to the wants of others are also the most rewarded. To see things from the customers’ perspective, to understand their needs and wants, is crucial to the success of any business. The success in business, or in any endeavor for that matter, is mostly the outcome of persistence, hard work and above all, thinking deeply about people’s preferences and knowing what products and services people might want. The success in business has little to do with the gift of gab or having a charismatic personality. That’s why, many wildly successful companies, including even social media companies, are led by people who reputedly share traits of autism or asperger’s. It requires ample knowledge and thinking to operate a business and to determine customers’ needs and wants. Given the importance of thinking skills in business success, introversion and intellectual inclination are quite common among successful businesspeople.

For many successful businesspeople, their public persona can be very different from their true personality. This irony is best exemplified by the late Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was known to tirelessly and anxiously rehearse his speeches backstage and at home so he could give a stellar performance on stage, which to the audience seemed extemporaneous. Thus arose the myth of Jobs being a born salesman. In reality, he was more an intellectual prodigy than a born salesman. Jobs’s mother taught him to read even before he entered elementary school. According to Jobs, when he entered school, the classes bored him, because all he wanted to do was read books and chase butterflies. When the school tested his intelligence at the end of fourth grade, he was found to be performing at the level of a high school sophomore. Impressed by his prodigious intellect, his school recommended promoting him in middle school by skipping two grades.

According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs was also a socially awkward loner in school. He was frequently bullied in school, and only flourished when he found the sympathetic company of other intellectually inclined children. In high school, Jobs befriended Bill Fernandez. Fernandez recalls, “In about eighth grade, halfway through, this new guy came into the school, who was Steve Jobs, and we were both introverted, intellectual, kind of socially inept, and we gravitated towards each other.” In another interview, Fernandez states, “We were both nerdy, socially inept, intellectual and we gravitated towards each other. We both also were not at all interested in the superficial bases upon which the other kids were basing their relationships, and we had no particular interest in living shallow lives to be accepted. So we didn’t have many friends.”

It was Bill Fernandez who introduced Jobs to another nerdy child, Steve Wozniak, who later became the co-founder of Apple with Jobs. Steve Wozniak recalled, “We had so much in common. Typically, it was really hard for me to explain to people what kind of design stuff I worked on, but Steve got it right away.” Jobs said of their friendship, “Woz was the first person I’d met who knew more electronics than I did.” As a child interested in electronics, Jobs was part of Hewlett-Packard’s Explorers Club. In his last two years of high school, he also started reading outside of science and technology and “found himself at the intersection . . . of those who were geekily immersed in electronics and those who were into literature and creative endeavors.”

Despite acquiring the public persona of a salesman in his later life, Jobs always remained a private man with only a small circle of close and loyal friends. Although he was famously charismatic and outspoken, most accounts of his life also say that he often appeared aloof in person. Besides, many people from his youth remember him as shy. Daniel Kottke, Jobs’s companion while on his spiritual trip to India and one of Apple’s first employees, says young Jobs was “shy and self-effacing, a very private guy.” Chrisann Brennan, his girlfriend from his teenage years, also remembers Jobs as shy. Jay Elliot, a senior executive at Apple in its early days, says, “He comes across in some ways as an aggressor, but he was very shy.”

Jobs preferred to think and deliberate with his colleagues by going on long walks. He was also a lifelong lover of books. In an interview in 1985, he claimed that reading books and eating sushi were his favorite things in life. In an anecdote narrated by biographer Julian Guthrie, Jobs borrowed Larry Ellison’s boat for a family vacation. When he returned from the 10-day vacation, he remarked about what he liked best about his time on the boat: “No one bothers you on the boat. You can read and think and watch the sky change colors at the end of the day.” Soon after, Jobs decided to get a boat for himself.

Steve Jobs’ successor at Apple, Tim Cook, and Apple’s famous industrial designer, Jonathan Ive, are also known to have a quiet temperament. People who know Jonathan Ive describe him as “humble and private,” “quiet and sensitive,” and so on. Jonathan Ive acknowledges, “I’m shy, . . . I’m always focussed on the actual work, and I think that’s a much more succinct way to describe what you care about than any speech I could ever make.” Quiet, talented people can often feel out of place in modern society, where petty talk and mundane concerns are valued. As Jonathan Ive says of himself, “When you feel that the way you interpret the world is fairly idiosyncratic, you can feel somewhat ostracized and lonely.”

The maverick entrepreneur Richard Branson is actually a self-described introvert, despite his flamboyant persona. He says of himself, “Believe it or not, despite all appearances I have always been naturally shy.” In his childhood, his mother was very concerned about his shyness. Branson says, “When I was a young boy, I would often refuse to talk to adults and cling to the back of my mother’s skirt. As an introverted kid, my mother worried my shyness would become debilitating as I got older.” To promote the Virgin group of companies, he had to constantly practice to become a public speaker and performer. Branson promotes his companies and carefully crafts Virgin’s brand image through flamboyant parties, stunts, and outdoor adventures. But he remains an introvert. Journalists who interview him are often surprised by how timid he seems in person. A reporter who once interviewed Branson had this to say: “A raging extrovert, you would confidently assume. But though Branson is amiable and unfailingly polite, his manner up close can be quite diffident. He says ‘er’ and ‘um’. He stammers. He doesn’t look you in the eye.”

Being dyslexic, Branson did not read much in childhood. Despite that, he is an avid thinker. It is said that he runs his numerous companies lying in his “home office hammock.” Branson says, “I have the most beautiful office in the world — a hammock overlooking the British Virgin Islands! A fantastic place for reflection, it sets me up for the day and the surprises that are bound to happen. I come up with more ideas on that hammock than I ever would anywhere else.” So, it is not surprising that Branson got the idea of Virgin Galactic when he was swaying in his hammock and staring at the stars one night.

Elon Musk is a great visionary entrepreneur. His upstart companies have already managed to transform three deeply entrenched industries: automobiles, space exploration, and international finance. In his book on Elon Musk’s life, biographer Ashlee Vance writes:

The most striking part of Elon’s character as a young boy was his compulsion to read. From a very young age, he seemed to have a book in his hands at all times. “It was not unusual for him to read ten hours a day,” said Kimbal [Elon’s brother]. “If it was the weekend, he could go through two books in a day.” The family went on numerous shopping excursions in which they realized mid-trip that Elon had gone missing. Maye [Elon’s mother] or Kimbal [Elon’s brother] would pop into the nearest bookstore and find Elon somewhere near the back sitting on the floor and reading in one of his trancelike states.

Musk says, “I was raised by books. Books, and then my parents.” He says of his childhood,

At one point, I ran out of books to read at the school library and the neighborhood library . . . This is maybe the third or fourth grade. I tried to convince the librarian to order books for me. So then, I started to read the Encyclopaedia Britannica. That was so helpful. You don’t know what you don’t know. You realize there are all these things out there.

Musk is an avid thinker. In his childhood, he often had the habit of drifting into deep daydream-like states, during which he had a distant look in his eyes and was unresponsive to everything around him. Fearing he might be deaf, his concerned parents tested him for hearing loss. His adenoid gland was removed by doctors in an attempt to improve his hearing — though surgery did little to improve his condition. Eventually, his parents realized that he was just thinking. His mother says, “He goes into his brain, and then you just see he is in another world. He still does that. Now I just leave him be because I know he is designing a new rocket or something.”

For Musk, childhood was tragic. He found school life to be a painful experience. In his school in South Africa, he was considered socially awkward, clumsy, and weird by his peers. As a child, Musk longed for friendships, but struggled to make any. The athletics-obsessed culture of his school aggravated his social isolation as he was neither athletic nor interested in sports. His mother watched in despair as his siblings brought their friends home while Musk remained friendless despite longing for friendships. For years, Musk also endured relentless bullying at school, including violent attacks by fellow students that led to hospitalization and long-term health consequences. As his first wife, Justine, says, “I don’t think people understand how tough he had it growing up. He was a really lonely kid.” Regarding Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and other extremely successful entrepreneurs, Justine Musk, who is also a writer and a Silicon Valley insider, says, “They are dyslexic, they are autistic, they have ADD, they are square pegs in round holes.” She says, “They are unconventional, and one reason they become entrepreneurs is because they can’t or don’t or won’t fit into the structures and routines of corporate life.” Plenty of high achievers, including Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs, struggled with social isolation in school. Justine Musk likens visionaries to people who can see in the dark. She believes that despite their beautiful mind, their brilliance and uniqueness mark them out from a young age and set them up for social ostracism by peers in school. She says, “Before we call these people visionaries, before they have that kind of success, we have other words for them, you know, geek or outsider, socially awkward, weird, a little different, odd one out.” She narrates the story of one of her entrepreneur friends: “I’d been friends with one person for ten years before he told me that when he was a kid he hated going to school because the other kids liked to follow him home and they would throw soda cans at his head. So, he sought refuge in computer games, which got him into coding, which led to the creation of his first company, which he sold by the time he was in his twenties. So you know nobody is throwing soda cans at him now.” Not just the titans of technology industry, even the biggest celebrities in show business had struggled with social isolation and bullying. As an adult, Elvis Presley may have had countless women swooning over him, but in his childhood, the shy and introverted Elvis was being mocked by other children and pelted with rotten fruit.

Regarding Elon Musk, he did not always intend to become an entrepreneur, and if not for his timidity, Musk might never have become an entrepreneur. In 1995, at the age of 24, he went to the office of Netscape in the hope of getting a job. But being extremely shy, he could not muster enough courage to talk to anyone there. After leaving the Netscape office empty-handed, Musk decided to write software on his own and start his own company. It was only after repeated successes managing numerous companies that he grew into the confident and charismatic public figure he is today.

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, describes his life as a student: “I was a very nerdy and good student. I was in the ‘goody goody’ class of students and was working hard, studying. I always did my homework on time. I was a good student. I liked school.” Jeff Bezos read voraciously in his childhood, especially a lot of science fiction. According to the teachers in his Montessori preschool, he “became so engrossed in whatever he was doing that they had to pick his chair up, with him still in it, and move it to the next activity.” According to Bezos’ high school friend, “he was capable of really focusing, in a crazy way, on certain things.” At age nine, he was described in a book about gifted children. The book noted that young Bezos was “friendly but serious” and he did not possess leadership skills. However, Bezos has now proven himself to be a great business leader.

A major reason why his company Amazon has managed to grow quickly is that Bezos hires people who are very smart. Bezos himself is very smart. A colleague comments that Bezos is “the most introspective guy [he] ever met. He was very methodical about everything in his life.” Another colleague claims, “While he may seem like he’s comfortable addressing large crowds or being on TV, he’s actually not. Many people think he’s this crazy extrovert, but that’s not really who he is. He’s a thinker. And a doer. He’s actually somewhat shy and introspective as a person.” In fact, according to his biography, Bezos scored as an introvert on the Myers-Briggs personality test when he was working at his former employer D.E. Shaw’s office (though, according to the test score, he was also the least introverted executive on the team and was considered the token extrovert in his office).

Many top business leaders were studious enough to gain admission into some of the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Jeff Bezos has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University. While Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg went to Harvard University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) went to Stanford (though, all four of them later dropped out of university to pursue entrepreneurship). Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, is said to revere his library so much that people have to remove their shoes and bow before entering it.

Besides being intellectual, most high profile business leaders are also reserved or introverted. Tech bosses like Larry Page are well-known for being introverts. Business Insider, a business news website, claims that Page “hadn’t been a social child” and that he has “longstanding social deficiencies.” Sergey Brin says that he is “not a very social person.” Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is alleged to have traits of Asperger’s. Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey is also an introvert. Describing himself as “extraordinarily reserved and shy,” Dorsey claims that he finds it easier to communicate through the written word than face-to-face. As a child, he suffered from a speech impediment and spent a lot of time alone at home. Both Google’s Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella are well-known to be soft-spoken and unassuming. Pichai is shy and bookish, according to his friends from school and college. Nadella was known in college as a studious boy who kept to himself. According to his friend, Nadella “spent a lot of time in the library. He was not very well known on the campus due to his introvert nature.” While holding meetings at Microsoft, Nadella’s motto is “Listen more, talk less and be decisive when the time comes.”

Many high achieving women, including Marissa Mayer, Oprah Winfrey, and Hillary Clinton, are also known to be quiet and intellectual in disposition. Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, was a studious child. According to Business Insider, “Peers from every stage of her life — from her early childhood days to her first years at Yahoo — say Mayer is a shy, socially awkward person.” By her own admission, Mayer is “painfully shy.” As an adult, she describes herself, “I’m just geeky and shy and I like to code.” In childhood, Marissa Mayer liked mathematics and science. During her school days, she would avoid conversations so that she could study.

Popular talk show host and businesswoman Oprah Winfrey was a quiet and studious child. Her strict grandmother taught her to read at an early age and her parents pushed her toward academic excellence. By age three, she could recite poems and Bible verses. She was referred to as a gifted child in her community. She says:

Books were my path to personal freedom . . . I learned to read at age 3 and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi . . . Because of his [her father’s] respect for education and my stepmother’s respect for education, every single week of my life that I lived with them I had to read library books and that was the beginning of the book club. Who knew? But I was reading books and had to do book reports in my own house. Now, at 9 years old, nobody wants to have to do book reports in addition to what the school is asking you to do, but my father’s insistence that education was the open door to freedom is what allows me to stand here today a free woman.

Oprah Winfrey is an African American who struggled with poverty and abuse in her childhood. She has always attributed her success to her love of books:

As a young girl in Mississippi, I had big dreams at a time when being a Negro child you weren’t supposed to dream big. I dreamed anyway. Books did that for me. Books allowed me to see a world beyond the front porch of my grandmother’s shotgun house and gave me the power to see possibilities beyond what was allowed at the time: beyond economic and social realities, beyond classrooms with no books and unqualified teachers, beyond false beliefs and prejudice that veiled the minds of so many men and women of the time. For me, those dreams started when I heard the stories of my rich heritage. When I read about Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman and Mary McLeod Bethune and Frederick Douglass. I knew that there was possibility for me.

In her adult life, Oprah still reads voraciously. Interestingly, Oprah says she doesn’t like watching television. “I normally don’t watch TV. TV is bad,” claims Oprah. According to her, avoiding television gives her time to read books. She also dislikes noise and distraction. Intellectual people cherish quietness and solitude. They often find noise and chatter an abomination. “I’m never in the house with noise — other than dogs yapping. I don’t leave the TV or radio on. I don’t have energy coming into my sphere that I’m not consciously inviting in,” says Oprah. She may be one of the most popular talk show hosts in the world, but she is also a self-described introvert. According to an interview with comedian Amy Schumer, Oprah calls herself an introvert and is apparently “thrilled” when she finds this quality in other people.

1.2 Founders of Nations

Furthermore, it is not just businesspeople or entrepreneurs who exhibit quiet and intellectual dispositions; founders of nations possess these qualities, as well. Even the world’s largest democracy — India — and the most powerful country — the United States — were founded by quiet, intellectual leaders.

India, the largest democracy in the world, came into existence in 1947, when Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led more than 350 million Indians to independence. Gandhi was admired all over the world for his nonviolent methods of resistance, and is modern India’s “Father of the nation.” He was extremely shy in his childhood. In his autobiography, he says:

From this school I went to the suburban school and thence to the high school, having already reached my twelfth year. I do not remember having ever told a lie, during this short period, either to my teachers or to my school-mates. I used to be very shy and avoided all company. My books and my lessons were my sole companions. To be at school at the stroke of the hour and to run back home as soon as the school closed — that was my daily habit. I literally ran back, because I could not bear to talk to anybody. I was even afraid lest anyone should poke fun at me.

In his autobiography, Gandhi recounts plenty of occasions in which his timid nature caused him embarrassment. Gandhi writes that, as a young man, the presence of half a dozen or more people would make him clam up. As a young man, he couldn’t make a public speech or even read aloud from written texts when in front of others. As Gandhi writes, he trembled and his vision became blurred whenever he spoke in a social setting. Sometimes, when he became tongue-tied, others had to read his speech for him in order to save him from embarrassment.

A lawyer by profession, Gandhi also failed miserably in his first court case. In the middle of the court proceedings, when his turn to speak came, he stood up to speak but became tongue-tied because of nervousness. In Gandhi’s own words, his heart sank into his boots and he felt his head reeling, along with the world around him. Needless to say, he became an object of laughter that day.

In another instance, when he was a young man living in Britain, he had to give a speech at a dinner. Given his tendency to become tongue-tied, he deliberately prepared a speech with only a few sentences. He had read about a speech Addison gave in the British Parliament, wherein Addison repeated the words “I conceive” three time but could not muster any further words and somebody sarcastically commented, “The gentleman conceived thrice but brought forth nothing.” Gandhi decided to begin his speech by quoting this humorous anecdote. At the dinner, Gandhi stood up to make his speech. But like Addison, Gandhi became tongue-tied in the first sentence, unable to remember what to say next. Embarrassed and ashamed, Gandhi abruptly ended his speech by thanking his dinner guests and swiftly sitting down. He writes in his autobiography that despite becoming more confident as a public speaker in later life, he still remained inept at making impromptu speeches in public or engaging in small talk, even with his friends.

In his adult life, Gandhi also made a remarkable discovery — silence is a virtue to be cultivated. Like Rockefeller, Benjamin Franklin, and other eminent people, Gandhi too realized that silence is not a weakness but a virtue. The realization that silence is a virtue can transform a shy person into a self-assured and confident one. It helps a shy person improve his self-esteem by overcoming the shame and stigma associated with shyness. The virtue of silence also teaches a person that it is acceptable to remain silent in social situations, rather than feel pressured to engage in small talk.

In his autobiography, Gandhi devotes a whole chapter recounting his transformation from a young man who was ashamed of his shyness to a self-assured man who saw his quietness as a source of strength. In his autobiography, Gandhi writes,

My constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given, the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

The United States of America, the most powerful nation in the world, was founded in the 18th century. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison were the most prominent founding fathers of the United States. All of them were quiet, socially reticent, or intellectual.

George Washington served as the first president of the United States. Although George Washington was not as erudite as his fellow men, he was a man of high character. He was also socially reticent. Books about his life include titles like “Big George: How a Shy Boy Became President Washington” and “George Washington, Quiet Hero.” Even George Washington — one of the greatest presidents of the world’s most powerful nation — trembled when it came to public speaking. The following words are an eyewitness account of Washington’s speech in the Senate chamber after taking the oath as the first president of the United States.

He rose, and all arose also, and addressed them. This great man was agitated and embarrassed more than ever he was by the leveled cannon or pointed musket. He trembled, and several times could scarce make out to read, though it must be supposed he had often read it before. He put part of the fingers of his left hand into the side of what I think the tailors call the faIl of the breeches (corresponding to the modern side-pocket), changing the paper into his left (right) hand. After some time he then did the same with some of the fingers of his right hand. When he came to the words ‘all the world,’ he made a flourish with his right hand, which left rather an ungainly impression. I sincerely, for my part, wished all set ceremony in the hands of the dancing-masters, and that this first of men had read off his address in the plainest manner, without ever taking his eyes from the paper, for I felt hurt that he was not first in everything.

In matters of public speaking, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, may have fared even worse. He was known as the “silent member” in the meetings of Continental Congress as he was often too tongue-tied to speak. As a two-term president, his inaugural addresses were said to be only partly audible because he spoke with too low a voice. He was famously shy and avoided public speaking whenever he could. For his annual addresses to the Congress, he even skipped making speeches. Instead, he wrote the texts and sent them to the Congress. He once said, “My great wish is to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty: to avoid attracting notice and to keep my name out of newspapers, because I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.” He was also intellectual. By the time he entered college, he was already proficient in Greek and Latin and was well versed in classics. In his youth, he often studied fifteen hours a day. His college friend is said to have remarked that Jefferson would often “tear himself away from his dearest friends, to fly to his studies.”

Benjamin Franklin was a scientist and a statesman. He was born into a poor family and received only a few years of education. But Franklin learned to read early in childhood. In his autobiography, Franklin states, “From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books.” He made a great effort to read books and master writing in his childhood. He says, “Often I sat up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.” In an anecdote from his childhood, he is said to have read the Spectator papers repeatedly and tried to memorize them. He possessed one of the largest private libraries in America at the time. In his youth, he became a vegetarian for a period of time, owing partly to ethical concerns about consuming meat and partly because he wanted to save money in order to buy books.

Renowned for his rags-to-riches story, Benjamin Franklin is regarded by many as the first man who came to exemplify the American ideal of the self-made man. After his death, his autobiography and other writings became popular as self-help guides among those who sought to improve themselves by emulating him. As a young man, Franklin had written down a set of thirteen moral virtues through which he strove to cultivate himself. In his later life, he credited his set of moral virtues for his success. Silence was one among the thirteen virtues that he strove to cultivate. He considered silence a preeminent virtue and trifling conversation a vice. Besides the virtue of silence, his moral system included other virtues such as temperance, moderation, frugality, humility, etc. As for the virtue of silence, Franklin, according to his autobiography, vowed to avoid trifling conversation and to speak only what is beneficial.

John Adams was the second president of the United States. He was the first member of his family to complete a college education. He wrote profusely and had a large library containing almost three thousand volumes. He was well versed in classical literature and had a lifelong passion for reading.

The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, was very quiet and studious in childhood. Like Jefferson, he had learned Greek and Latin and was well read in classical literature before he entered college. Like many of his contemporaries, he had a lifelong passion for reading. As president, James Madison was often perceived as ill at ease in public and was said to have attended just enough social events to avoid the label of a recluse. The shy Madison’s marriage to the very outgoing Dolley Madison was a surprise to his friends.

During the American War Between the States of 1861–1865, it was President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses Grant who played prominent roles in keeping the country united. Since his youth, Abraham Lincoln was often described as quiet and reserved. He had little formal education, and taught himself. As a child, his neighbors and family thought he was lazy because he spent too much time reading and writing. Living a frontier life in his childhood, he often carried a book along with him wherever he went. Despite lacking practical experience, by reading books he mastered a wide variety of subjects including grammar, literature, mathematics and law. He could recall from memory passages from the books he read. According to biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, “Life was a school to him and he was always studying and mastering every subject before him.” His best friend, Dennis Hanks, said, “I never saw Abe after he was twelve that he didn’t have a book in his hand or in his pocket. It just didn’t seem natural to see a feller read like that.” Abraham Lincoln himself is said to have remarked that “my best friend is the man who will give me a book I haven’t read.” He once told a friend that he “read through every book he had ever heard of in that country, for a circuit of 50 miles.”

General Ulysses Grant was the military hero who led the Union army in defeating the Confederacy in the War Between the States. He later served as the eighteenth president of the United States. He was known to be painfully shy throughout his life and maintained only a few friends. It is said that he was more comfortable in the company of horses than people. But he had a happy family life and was very attached to his wife and children. The paradox of a great military hero with extreme shyness always baffled General Grant’s biographers and the public. General Grant was also reputed to be scrupulously honest in behavior and is also said to have had an aversion to war and guns, despite his military career.

1.3 Religious Leaders

Ironically, a penchant for solitude is a key characteristic of some of the greatest social leaders in history. Religious leaders such as Jesus, Muhammad, Vivekananda, and Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) were men well versed in the virtues of silence and solitude. Their greatness was derived not from loquacious or gregarious natures, but from silence and solitude. As the Bible attests, Jesus frequently sought silence and solitude away from the company of his disciples and the crowds. Before he embarked on his ministry, Jesus sought solitude in the desert for forty days. Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was also well versed in solitude. He sought the sanctuary of the remote cave Hira on the mountain Jabal al-Nour outside Mecca. He used to spend a lot of time alone in the seclusion of the cave before he embarked on his religious mission. According to the Hadith, the prophet loved solitude. Throughout Hinduism’s long history, its most influential gurus were those who practiced silence and solitude. Vivekananda, the most influential of the modern-day Hindu sages, regularly meditated in silence and solitude. He embarked on his missionary life around the world after contemplating in solitude on a rock island in the middle of the sea. Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, regularly meditated for days at a time.

1.4 Politicians

Many take for granted the idea that successful politicians have a gregarious and loquacious personality, but nothing could be further from the truth. The most powerful politicians of our day could be introverts, at least in their private lives. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is well-known as an introvert. She is a physicist by profession. Before becoming the chancellor, she was known as a socially awkward and quiet woman in German political circles. According to the New Yorker magazine, “For years, public speaking was visibly painful to Merkel, her hands a particular source of trouble.” The New Yorker says, “Throughout her career, Merkel has made a virtue of biding her time and keeping her mouth shut.” Merkel distrusts high-flying rhetoric and her philosophy in life is to “under-promise and over-deliver.” In politics, she is often criticized for her ponderous approach and slow decision-making. According to the New Yorker, she was just like that even in her childhood. It reports that, during a swimming lesson in her school, she stood hesitantly on the diving board for a full hour before jumping.

Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson was an academically brilliant child in school. He went to Eton College with King’s Scholarship and studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford. As a child, Johnson was reputedly a “quiet, studious chap.” Quoting a childhood acquaintance, his biographer Sonia Purnell writes that young Johnson used to be “very quiet, always with his nose in a book.” According to Purnell, old friends of the Johnson family marvel at how different he is today in public. Biographer Purnell says that although Johnson has an ebullient persona in public, he is actually socially reticent by nature. She describes his aloof nature: “Most admit they have rarely if ever conducted a lengthy conversation with Johnson; he is not one to share a pint at the pub or a club with a mate, for instance, and also only likes to run alone.” Most people close to him describe him as an introvert. Journalist Harry Mount, who worked closely with Johnson at the Telegraph newspaper, says Johnson is “essentially a cerebral introvert.” His former girlfriend and journalist Petronella Wyatt says he is a loner and has few close friends. According to Wyatt, “He is a man who loves jokes, but he is not a joker. He is a performer who is an introvert, veering between ebullience and self-doubt; a happy-looking man for whom happiness can be precarious.” Quoting his close aides, news agency Reuters confirms that Johnson is a “natural introvert,” and that “beneath his blustering, self-confident demeanor was a shy, serious man.” Reuters also confirms that, at odds with his public image as an unscripted showman, Johnson is actually someone who “needs a lot of time alone before speaking in public.” According to biographer Purnell, Johnson’s ebullient and irreverent persona is deliberately crafted: “Those wonderfully spontaneous bumbling speeches . . . are meticulously planned. Former staff reveal how the pauses, the non sequiturs, the rambling tangents are studiously prepared; the most successful jokes and ‘off-the-cuff’ Boris-isms are rehearsed and recycled. He perfected his act on Have I Got News for You, discovering how a display of stage incompetence endeared him to the audience.” In her book, biographer Purnell also writes about a peculiar characteristic of Johnson’s personality. Purnell notes that Johnson at times has a tendency to become detached from his surroundings and retreat into his inner world. Purnell speculates that this characteristic is a consequence of Johnson’s hearing disabilities in childhood. As a child, Johnson was thought to be deaf. At the age of eight, he had grommets surgically inserted into the ear to improve his hearing. (However, as an adult, Johnson says that his tendency to ignore conversations in his childhood may have exaggerated the perception he was deaf.)

Theresa May, the former Prime Minister of Britain, is a serious-minded, socially reserved person, according to the British media. The Guardian newspaper states that May is “clearly quite an introvert.” The BBC calls her “guarded, buttoned up, almost inscrutably private.” The BBC quotes a former colleague as saying that she engages in “no small talk whatsoever — none.”

Former US President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are widely regarded as introverts. Modi, the leader of the world’s largest democracy, has had a solitary and contemplative nature since his childhood. In his youth, he aspired to become a recluse and would often leave his home in search of avenues for solitude and contemplation. He used to seek solitude in forests and remote places. Aspiring for spiritual and contemplative pursuits, young Modi reportedly eschewed a married life. “I actually enjoy loneliness,” says Modi. Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, is a private man. In his biography by Oleg Blotsky, Putin’s wife said of him: “My husband is sort of introverted, just as his parents were.”

According to the BBC, Chinese President Xi Jinping has a reserved and unassuming personality, and in his long political career, he seldom drew attention to himself. According to a childhood friend quoted by the BBC, Xi was a voracious reader and had a socially reticent and humorless personality. In a profile of Xi Jinping, the New York Times says that Xi was “a shy, bookish youth.” According to the New Yorker magazine, before Xi came to power he was an “unremarkable provincial administrator.” An acquaintance, quoted by the New Yorker, says, “He would speak only if he really had something to say, and he didn’t make casual promises. He would think everything through before opening his mouth.”

US President Donald Trump studied at an Ivy League university. The latest US president’s reading and thinking habits are hard to ascertain given that there are plenty of conflicting reports. Despite the caveat, some of the assertions by the President himself and his acquaintances are presented here. In his book How to Get Rich, Trump says that he consciously seeks out quiet time in his busy life to feel renewed and refreshed. He wrote that although he is an extrovert, he sets aside around three hours every day for reading and reflecting. In the same book, he criticizes the high noise level in the American society and the tendency of people to fill silent moments with banter. Although widely regarded as an extrovert, at least a few acquaintances have said that Trump is also a deep thinker in private. The Boston Globe newspaper, which interviewed more than a dozen of his college classmates, says that, although Trump was brash, outspoken, and academically unimpressive compared with his Ivy League peers, he was also more aloof and focused than them, and he shunned extracurricular activities, fraternity parties, and other social events on the campus and spent his spare time pursuing his real-estate ambitions.

It cannot be emphasized enough that public persona has little correlation to true personality. Many successful people tend to be inept at small talk. Contrary to what many assume, the ability to speak, especially extempore, is not a forte of many politicians. Most politicians are well coached in the art of public speaking. Besides, politicians generally tend to read from prepared speeches and rely on teleprompters. Barack Obama, known for his oratorical skills, regularly uses a teleprompter for speeches. Many charismatic leaders in recent history, such as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, have quite the opposite personality in private. John F. Kennedy was a self-described introvert. He was also a scholar. Despite being exceptionally charismatic in public, Ronald Reagan was famously aloof and intensely private. He was described as “not making close friendships, except for his wife.” According to his biographer Edward M. Yager, Reagan was shy and had “an unusual appetite for books” in his childhood. According to the New York Times, Bill Clinton, who is an avid reader, once read as many as 300 books in a single year. As a child, Clinton was shy and bookish.

The love of learning played an important role in the rise of top politicians like Emmanuel Macron and Narendra Modi, who came from provincial, middle class or working class backgrounds. French President Emmanuel Macron says, “I climbed the ranks with the help of school . . . My grandparents were a teacher, railway worker, social worker, and bridges and roadways engineer, all came from modest backgrounds.” As a child, Macron used to read voraciously. In school, he earned the reputation of being an intellectual prodigy. To his classmates, he was the boy who knew “everything about everything.” In his autobiography, Macron writes, “I spent my childhood in books, a bit removed from the world . . . I lived to a great extent through texts and through words.” In his youth, he aspired to become a writer and saw writing as his “only vocation.” He is also said to have written three unpublished novels. Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi was the son of a tea-seller. Modi was an avid reader in his childhood. Despite his poverty-stricken childhood, Modi saved enough money to buy books and was even able to build a small private library of his own in his childhood.

Many politicians are far more intellectual than their public image suggests. Contrary to his public image, former US president George W. Bush was, in fact, a voracious reader. In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in 2008, Karl Rove, his deputy chief of staff, wrote, “In the 35 years I’ve known George W. Bush, he’s always had a book nearby. He plays up being a good ol’ boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don’t make it through either unless you are a reader.” Rove claimed that President Bush read as many as 186 books during the period from 2006 to 2008, when he was still in office. Others, including his former aide Tevi Troy and journalist Walt Harrington, have also confirmed Bush’s reading habit. It goes without saying that only those who are comfortable with some degree of silence and solitude are generally able to read so voraciously. Even in politics, the ability to think and strategize is far more important than the ability to speak or socialize. However, as private activities, reading and thinking are not easily noticed by the public. Furthermore, many public figures who might seem unintellectual or even anti-intellectual in public may have simply cultivated a public persona that appeals to the masses. As for George W. Bush, in 1978 he lost the election for Congress to a conservative Democratic opponent who capitalized on his country-boy image. After his defeat, Bush, by his own admission, vowed “never to get out-countried again” (as told to a Time magazine reporter in 2000).

Most people take for granted that great leaders are bold, gregarious, and charismatic, but this is a myth. The reality is quite the opposite. Many great leaders, such as Gandhi, Washington, and Lincoln, were quiet, modest, and humble. Some such as Washington were even reluctant to assume leadership roles. Napoleon Bonaparte and Winston Churchill were voracious readers of books and were shy by nature.

For those unconvinced that timid and quiet people can be powerful leaders, the lives of the leaders of the most notorious terrorist organizations in recent memory should dispel any doubts. Osama Bin Laden, the late founder of Al-Qaeda; Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of ISIS; and Abubakar Shekau, leader of Boko Haram, are all known to be introverted and intellectual. It is not an exaggeration to state that all three of them could resemble a university professor in their temperament. Bin Laden was famously shy and soft-spoken. The Guardian newspaper reports that he was among the top 50 or 60 school students of his age in his country. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the late leader of the Islamic State (ISIS), has a doctorate degree in religious studies. Baghdadi was one of the most ruthless leaders of our time, under whose watch unspeakable crimes against humanity were committed. Yet, all accounts of his life consistently suggest that he was introverted or reserved by nature. Quoting acquaintances from Baghdadi’s hometown, the Newsweek magazine says “he was always known ‘for being so quiet you could hardly hear his voice’” and that “he grew up studious, pious and calm. He was introverted, without many friends.” The BBC says, “All accounts of his early life agree that he was a quiet, scholarly and devout student. . . . Some even say he was shy, and a bit of a loner. The word ‘charismatic’ has never been attached to him.” A profile of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by the Brookings Institute says he was “an introvert with a passion for religion” and that he was “withdrawn, taciturn, and, when he spoke, barely audible. Neighbors who knew him as a teenager remember him as shy and retiring.” Regarding Abubakar Shekau, the leader of the notorious African terror outfit Boko Haram, the BBC reports that he was a theology student with a reputation of being quiet. According to the BBC, Shekau is a “fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man — part-theologian, part-gangster.” An acquaintance — quoted by the BBC — says Shekau “has a photographic memory” and that “he hardly talks.”

1.5 Entertainers

The celebrity culture has been partly responsible for the rise of anti-intellectual attitudes in modern society, and because of this culture, many people today believe that loud, ostentatious behaviors are the key to success in the modern world. Visual media tend to portray celebrities and their lifestyle in a way that is glamorous and exciting. But considering that television shows and public appearances are often highly scripted and stage managed, celebrities and television personalities are unlikely to be as spontaneous or extroverted in their real lives as their public personas suggest.

The real lives of celebrities are often far less glamorous than what is portrayed in the media. For most people in show business, fame and recognition came only after toiling for years in obscurity. Besides, as the spate of celebrity deaths caused by suicides and drug overdoses in the past hundred years indicate, fame could be as much of a curse as it is a blessing. To a large extent it is true that the more glamorous a person’s profession is, the more the criticisms and unruly public comments they have to endure and therefore the greater the toll on their mental health. Being in the spotlight and the pressure of living up to the expectations of the public take a toll on most people. Moreover, despite what modern psychology says, repeated exposures do not always cure the anxiety of performing in public, especially in people who are naturally inhibited. It is said that many performing artists suffer from anxiety and resort to medicating their anxiety with drugs and alcohol. In 2018, Avicii, one of the most famous EDM (electronic dance music) producers and DJs in the world, took his own life. Before his suicide, he had stated that the pressure to live a life of public appearances, socializing, and partying led to the deterioration of his mental health. For Avicii, constant public performances did not reduce his anxiety; it only became worse and medicating it with alcohol created health problems like pancreatitis. Avicii once talked about the irony of seeing his fans happy while his own life was made miserable by the public appearances he had to endure. Artists may love the act of creating art and sharing it with others, but many artists dislike the limelight, which they see as a necessary evil for furthering their career. Like many artists, Avicii too was an introvert.

Many celebrities, perhaps most, are shy and introverted. The lives of even the biggest pop stars, including Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, have been characterized by extreme shyness. Both Michael Jackson — the “King of Pop” — and Elvis Presley — the “King of Rock and Roll” — were introverts.

Most celebrities were not among the popular children in their schools. In their childhood, many even struggled to fit in with their peers in school. Singer Taylor Swift says that she was considered “weird and different” by her classmates and that she sought solace in writing songs as she had no friends in school. She claims, “I first started writing songs because I didn’t really have anyone else to talk to. As sad as that sounds, I was going through this really hard time at school where I didn’t have any friends. Songwriting for me just started out as therapy.”

Some were even badly bullied and humiliated in childhood. Elvis Presley, the King of Rock and Roll, was one such person. Despite his glamorous, bigger-than-life persona, Elvis had a tragic personal life, even as a child. Taunted and jeered by his peers, he had a difficult time at school. He was a loner. His childhood friend remembers, “My older brother went to school with him and he and some of the other boys used to hide behind buildings and throw things at him — rotten fruit and stuff — because he was different, because he was quiet and he stuttered and he was a mama’s boy.” According to another friend, “He seemed very lonely and had no real friends. He just didn’t seem to be able to fit in.” Even as an adult, Elvis was shy. Because he was a shy, polite man offstage, his acquaintances were often struck by how different he seemed on stage.

Even the most ostentatious celebrities of today are shy. Rapper Kanye West is known to be a shy person, and he says he does not enjoy small talk. According to family and friends, Kanye is an introvert. (Incidentally, Kanye also claims to be a “proud non-reader of books,” despite his mother being an English Literature professor.) Reality television star Kim Kardashian says, “I’m the girl who’s too shy to dance in a nightclub — maybe for one song, and then that’s it. The real Kim is very shy and reserved and not outspoken and loud like everybody assumes she is.” As unlikely as it may seem, Kardashian has repeated this assertion at other occasions. Her description of herself is also confirmed by others. Journalist Allison Kugel claims that “Kim Kardashian is quite different in person than some might expect,” and that she is “an observer and an introvert” who does not engage in much off the cuff banter with unfamiliar people. According to her childhood best friend Nikki Lund, Kardashian was a quiet girl in school. Comedian Jim Carrey says of himself, “I know this sounds strange, but as a kid, I was really shy. Painfully shy.” According to him, his comedy skills helped him cope with shyness.

Even popular YouTubers, despite seeming overly boisterous and unmistakably extroverted in their videos, tend to be introverts in their real life. The most popular YouTuber in 2019, Felix Kjellberg, also known as PewDiePie, is an introvert. As one colleague commented, PewDiePie is “much more reserved in real life,” than he seems in his videos. Popular American YouTubers like Markiplier, Shane Dawson, and Jake Paul are also known to be introverts. Markiplier says “I never thought anyone would pay that much attention to me, because I was a quiet guy. I didn’t have many friends in college, and I had a very small group of friends in high school.” Shane Dawson says, “Online, I’m this loud, outrageous, confident guy who acts like nothing bothers him, and he has the whole world at his fingertips. In reality, I’m a shy, quiet guy who would rather spend his nights lying in bed watching Netflix.” Jake Paul says about him: “I don’t know if the word is ‘shy,’ but ‘reserved.’ I’m always thinking.” Popular British YouTuber KSI, alias of Olajide Olatunji, is also an introvert. KSI used to be a “softly spoken nerdy kid.” He says he still remains the same. “I’m actually quite quiet,” he says. “I’m not really out there. But that’s a side I hardly show.” Regarding him, “as a teenager, he was so shy and introverted that he ‘couldn’t even speak to a girl.’” He says his online persona is just a character — “an oversized version of his true self, which is actually more withdrawn, almost introverted.” (For many youngsters today, being a YouTube celebrity has become the most glamorous job imaginable. However, the reality is quite different. Media like television, YouTube, and social media do not showcase people’s lives accurately. It is said that many YouTubers eventually succumb to burnout. Having to constantly generate interesting ideas, churning out videos at breakneck speed (in order to not lose viewers and to stay on the top of YouTube’s rankings) and having to deal with unruly comments are things that can make the life of YouTubers miserable in a way that most youngsters can’t fathom.)

Plenty of Hollywood celebrities and pop singers, including Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Lady Gaga, Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Justin Timberlake, Keanu Reeves, Elton John, and Vanessa Hudgens are known to be shy or introverted. In fact, social anxiety could be a common condition among celebrities. Here are a few quotes on shyness from well-known celebrities:

(My mom and dad) tell stories where I just would not speak. I think at times they thought that I didn’t know how to . . . But I think that’s probably one of the reasons I became an actor; it gave me a vehicle to start expressing things. — Richard Gere I was shy as a boy and, to be honest, I have never changed . . . It might seem odd, but I still am very shy and have to steel myself when I am going to be among a crowd of people I don’t know at a reception or some other event. I sometimes have to act my way through it. Perhaps that is what makes actors act. They possibly have a shyness that stops them from exposing their real person, so they want to become someone else and go on stage or screen as a different character to the real one. — Richard Gere I might not be shy with people that I know but with people that I don’t know I am very shy . . . I always feel shy in the Hollywood scene. I feel a bit like I did in high school, like I don’t really fit in. — Lady Gaga I was very shy as a kid. But when I found out I could perform and have people’s attention, everything changed. My mom likes to joke that until I was eight or nine I only knew what my sneakers looked like because I constantly walked around with my head down. — Justin Timberlake As an adolescent, I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn’t really have the nerve to sing my songs onstage and nobody else was doing them. I decided to do them in disguise so that I didn’t have to actually go through the humiliation of going onstage and being myself. — David Bowie It was very natural for me to want to disappear into a dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist. — Nicole Kidman I was shy, withdrawn and I didn’t have any self-esteem. — Robert Pattinson I’m shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I’ve done everything I can to avoid it. — Johnny Depp

Shyness and emotional intensity have long been associated with artistic ability. In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato attributed artistic ability to “divine frenzy,” an intense state of mind akin to mania. As recently as 2017, the Economist magazine, in an article about the preponderance of shyness among celebrities, wrote: “Shyness and creativity often go hand in hand.”

1.6 Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, and Others

The great social leaders who have devoted their lives to the betterment of society were introverts. Mother Teresa, a modern paragon of selfless virtue, was an introvert. The anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela was also a socially reticent person. In his autobiography, he calls himself an introvert. During his school days, he used to go long-distance running to get away from the commotion of school life. “I enjoyed the discipline and solitariness of long-distance running, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school.” As a young lawyer attending African National Congress meetings, he describes himself, “I went as an observer, not a participant, for I do not think that I ever spoke. I wanted to understand the issues under discussion, evaluate the arguments, see the caliber of the men involved.”

American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was a charismatic leader and a great orator, but he was otherwise introverted by nature. David Garrow, who wrote a Pulitzer prize winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., says that in college “most found King to be a quiet and reserved young man, ‘just a regular student,’ who always sat in the back of classrooms.” Being a studious pupil, he took copious notes in class. According to one of his professors, King was “quiet, introspective and very much introverted” and “had a tendency to be withdrawn and not to participate.” According to Stanley Levison, a close friend and fellow activist in the civil rights movement, King was “very thoughtful, quiet, and shy.” In a 1957 Time magazine article, King, alluding to the contrast between his charismatic public persona and his introverted private self, referred to himself as an “ambivert.” According to the magazine, King is inclined to “withdraw within himself for long, single minded concentration on his people’s problems, and then exert the force of personality and conviction that makes him a public leader.”

Neil Armstrong, who was known for his “steely calm in the face of peril” was a man of great intellect and was said to be socially reticent. Armstrong chose an extremely private life after his Apollo 11 moon mission. Successful movie makers such as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are also introverts.

Great scientists and inventors such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla were quiet and intellectual. Because there is a common perception among the public that scientists tend to be quiet and intellectual, the lives of these men will not be elaborated in this book. Interestingly, the greatest personalities in fields such as athletics and sports are also known to have an introverted or thoughtful disposition, despite the fact that these fields seem to have little in common with intellectual inclination. Michael Jordan, the great basketball player, is an introvert. Usain Bolt, the fastest athlete in the world, has a “quiet and serious side” in private, despite his flamboyant persona on track. According to his manager Norman Peart, Bolt was a “shy teenager who didn’t talk much.” Tyson Gay, the second fastest runner in the world, is widely regarded as an introvert.

The phenomenon of quiet, thoughtful people being the most successful is not confined to the West or the developed world. India’s greatest businesspeople, industrialists, politicians, movie stars, and sporting personalities, such as Ratan Tata, Mukesh Ambani, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Gautam Adani, Narendra Modi, Manmohan Singh, Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth, Sachin Tendulkar are all known to be quiet, reserved, or introverted.

Bollywood movie industry — known for its over-the-top movies and larger-than-life personalities — is actually dominated by actors who are more or less introverts. As unlikely as it might seem, top Bollywood movie actors Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, and Hrithik Roshan are all known to be reserved, or shy. As noted in the References section of this book, despite his flamboyant and exuberant persona, actor Shah Rukh Khan has mentioned in at least four separate interviews that his personality is very different from his onscreen persona and that he is very shy and introverted in real life. Amitabh Bachchan, one of the greatest movie stars in the history of Indian cinema, is an introvert. In the following passages, Bachchan describes his efforts to make it in the entertainment industry despite his shyness:

I was very shy as a child. Very shy. Lot of problems with very simple things. Like entering a restaurant all by myself. And even much later when I was looking for work in films, I met Manojji and he said, he was shooting in Filmistan, he said come and see me there. And I used to catch a train from Churchgate, go to Andheri, walk from the station up to the Filmistan gate. But I just never had the courage to walk in. And I tried to, for seven days, but every time, I came back from the gate. I’m very shy even today. But I must admit that coming into films, and putting myself into situations which are unreal has, perhaps, given me a little more confidence. But initially it was destroying. It destroyed me completely when I went to Hotel Sun ’n’ Sand and I saw Manojji doing a song with Sairaji. There were millions of people standing. I was petrified. I remember having sleepless nights. I still do sometimes, when I have to do a song out in the open in front of people. It’s not so much the incapability to do the sequence, as the fact that I have to do it when there are millions of eyes watching. I know it’s a contradiction to my earlier interest which is theater. But an introvert, I’ve always been.

Although he is now one of the most iconic actors of Indian cinema, starting out in the industry was difficult for even the young Bachchan. For him, fame was achieved after enduring plenty of rejection and hardships:

There was a lot of rejection because everywhere I went, I failed to get a job. Because I was either not qualified enough or I was too shy or I was too tongue-tied during my interview and there were more qualified people getting it. Terribly frustrating time.

Artists reputedly have a sensitive temperament. Bachchan says,

I’ve always said that actors should be treated very carefully. We need a lot of understanding. There are millions of things that could destroy us. We are broken up people inside. That’s why you find a lot of us landing up with the psychiatrists. That’s why you find a lot of us behaving very peculiarly and I say, please grant us this peculiarity. Because, this is all that is there to say our own. No, we don’t live normal lives…that is why we need to be treated perhaps a little gently. Handled a little more carefully. Understood a lot. Grant us our idiosyncrasies. Grant us our difficult behaviour, obnoxious behaviour, whatever it is. It’s not easy to be stable. And if there is somebody who is stable, then he’s got have immense power, strength to wrestle with.

Bachchan is perhaps confirming the timeworn notion of a tortured artist.

High achievers are generally not the street-smart, all-round personalities as some imagine them to be. According to Paul Graham, the prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalist, high achievers tend to resemble “absent-minded professors” in their everyday life. As the biographies of people like Warren Buffett indicate, it is not uncommon for high-achieving people to be extremely absent-minded or less adept at practical, everyday matters. Given their narrow focus, it is also not uncommon for them to be less knowledgeable in areas outside their primary interests. According to Warren Buffett’s daughter, “He just doesn’t know how to function, except go to work.” Buffett was so absent-minded that he didn’t even know how to do simple household chores. Biographer Andy Kilpatrick says of Buffett, “He’s a fellow who’s brilliant but he needs people around him who can take care of some needs. He doesn’t really do household chores, he’s got no mechanical brain. He can barely even turn on a light switch.”

The fact that successful and eminent people are generally introverted or socially reserved has not gone unnoticed. A 10-year study called the CEO Genome Project found introverts were more effective CEOs compared with extroverts. In another study called the CEO Personality and Firm Policies, researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard, and Stanford analyzed 4591 CEOs and found that introverts were better CEOs. Furthermore, in his study of great companies, well-known management guru Jim Collins found that great companies were led by people who were reserved and unassuming. Venture capitalists like Paul Graham know what makes a successful entrepreneur. As Paul Graham says, “It’s hard to find successful adults now who don’t claim to have been nerds in high school.”

Remarkably, two thousand years ago, in the Aristotelian (or perhaps pseudo-Aristotelian) book Problemata, it was asked,

Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly of an atrabilious [melancholic] temperament, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by black bile, as is said to have happened to Heracles among the heroes?

Ancient societies had a more favorable view of the quiet, inhibited temperament. In the latter passages of the Problemata, it is suggested that a well-tempered melancholic temperament is the ideal:

Those in whom the excessive heat dies down to a mean temperature are atrabilious, but they have more practical wisdom and are less eccentric and in many respects superior to others either in education or in the arts or in public life . . . And since it is possible for a variable state to be well tempered and in a sense a favourable condition, and since it is possible for the condition to be hotter and then again cold, when it should be so, or to change to the contrary owing to excess, the result is that all atrabilious persons have remarkable gifts, not owing to disease but from natural causes.

The text in the Problemata also states that Plato and Socrates had melancholic temperaments.

Contrary to what many today have come to believe, those high in socioeconomic status tend to be reserved, inhibited, and intellectual in disposition. Throughout history, while the lower classes were often perceived as loud and brash, the educated aristocratic classes were perceived as overly refined, sensitive, and effete. Today, prosperous and educated communities of Jews and Asian-Americans are often stereotyped as nerdy or reserved. Across the world, social reticence is a quality that seems to generally vary in accordance with socioeconomic development. Societies that are prosperous, educated and with low levels of corruption are relatively more likely to be perceived as socially reticent. For example, prosperous and well-run north European countries have populations that are often stereotyped as reserved and serious, as compared to southern Europe. Such a phenomenon may also exist within a country when there are large regional disparities in socioeconomic indicators. For example, in Italy, its northern region is more prosperous, more educated, and better governed compared with its south; Northern Italians are also perceived as socially reticent relative to southerners. Furthermore, the populations of Scandinavia and East Asia — which are arguably the most prosperous, the most educated, and the least corrupt societies in the world — are particularly known for being socially reserved and introverted. The Japanese are reputed for being quiet and stoic even in the face of calamity.

It is the ability to think that distinguishes human beings from other animals. It has allowed humans to rise above other animals. It is the power of thought that allows people to achieve great deeds. Hence, the doers who achieve great things in the practical world tend to be exemplary thinkers as well. It is thinkers who accomplish the most in both practical and intellectual endeavors. Because characteristics such as shyness, introversion, bookishness are often associated with a contemplative disposition, these characteristics feature prominently in the lives of high achievers. Moreover, high levels of education and social inhibition often seem to go hand in hand, likely because rigorous education cultivates intellect and makes people more thoughtful. It is only natural that those with a contemplative nature are more inhibited as well.

Today, many people associate a quiet temperament with incompetence or even social maladjustment. For people who are quiet-natured or socially inhibited, internalizing such beliefs is harmful. It erodes their self-confidence and self-esteem. It can make them resentful in their personal life and less diligent in their professional life. It can also discourage them from pursuing practical occupations, such as entrepreneurship and politics. The emphasis on traits like eloquence, gregariousness, and self-confidence in schools and workplaces could be a reason why many quiet-natured people in today’s society do not fare well in their life. Despite the preponderance of introversion and social inhibition among high achievers, social surveys sometimes find that introverts generally earn less and are less happy than others. Cultural attitudes that equate quietness with incompetence is likely the reason why plenty of introverted people are not as successful or happy as they should be. Given the stigma against a shy, inhibited personality in workplaces, introverts are also less likely to be promoted at work. Also, with the demise of old-fashioned character education, quiet and inhibited people today are not taught the actual skills necessary to flourish in society.

While people who view their quiet nature as a weakness tend to struggle in life, those who consider their quiet nature as a strength might fare much better. Many high-achieving people such as Benjamin Franklin and John D. Rockefeller did not consider their quiet nature a liability. Instead, they considered it a virtue and sought to cultivate it. It is unthinkable today why anyone would want to cultivate quietness as a virtue. But Rockefeller and Franklin grew up in an age before the advent of modern psychology when most people looked to religious scriptures and classical literature for guidance on behavior. Religious scriptures, including the Bible, tend to view quietness as a virtue, not weakness. Not many people know that the obsession with social skills in today