Julian de Medeiros, a popular TikToker<\/a> who also writes about philosophy on Substack<\/a>, recently shared how Voltaire could tell whether someone was highly intelligent. His observation suggests that sometimes those who don\u2019t speak know far more than those who can\u2019t keep their mouths shut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere\u2019s how you know that someone is smart, like highly intelligent, and this goes back to a simple maxim from the French thinker Voltaire, who wrote, \u2018Judge a man not by his answers but by his questions,\u2019\u201d de Medeiros said in a TikTok video<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n @julianphilosophy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Simple sign of intelligence #intelligence<\/a> #smart<\/a> #wisdom<\/a> #growth<\/a> \u266c original sound \u2013 Julian de Medeiros<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat he meant, and I think this is so important, is that the more intelligent someone is, the more they listen. The more they want to learn and grow each and every day. They have an innate curiosity,\u201d he continued. \u201cAs Plato put it, \u2018An intelligent person speaks when they have something to say, but an unintelligent person speaks because they have nothing to say.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n An intelligent person also knows how to ask the right questions to learn as much as possible from the person they are talking to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Voltaire\u2019s thoughts on intelligence make a lot of sense. Curious people seek out new information. They ask questions, read books, take things apart, and make connections between ideas that may not be apparent at first. Studies show it starts early: infants seen as curious were more likely to grow up to be intelligent<\/a> adults. Albert Einstein was a true believer in curiosity. He once said<\/a>, \u201cI have no special talents. I am only passionately curious,\u201d and was also famous for urging people to \u201cnever stop questioning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam Bryant<\/a>, a columnist for The New York Times<\/em>, interviewed<\/a> 525 CEOs and found that curiosity was the most important<\/a> quality:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[Curiosity] means trying to understand how things work, and then trying to understand how they can be made to work better. It means being curious about people and their backstories. It means using insights to build deceptively simple frameworks and models in their minds to make sense of their industry\u2014and all the other disruptive forces shaping our world\u2014so they can explain it to others. Then they continue asking questions about those models, and it\u2019s those questions that often lead to breakthrough ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, curiosity can be seen as a source of fuel and energy for the mind. You can have an incredible brain that\u2019s great at storing and making sense of complex ideas, but without a constant stream of information and input, it\u2019s like a sports car with no driver.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Voltaire was an 18th-century French philosopher, writer, and one of the most important voices of the Enlightenment. His works challenged authoritarianism and championed freedom of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/651196420_1404724241688563_2793236989889155797_n.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6618,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6616\/revisions\/6618"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Signs that someone is highly intelligent, according to Voltaire<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nStudies show a deep connection between intelligence and curiosity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"albert](\"https:\/\/www.upworthy.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/03\/EIn.jpg\")
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