The good news is you don’t need to be brilliant to be wise. The bad news is that without wisdom, brilliance isn’t enough.

The line draws a sharp distinction between raw cognitive horsepower (“brilliance”) and practical-moral judgment (“wisdom”). Schwartz’s point is that wisdom is not an elite trait reserved for geniuses; it is accessible through experience, humility, and attention to values and consequences. At the same time, he warns that intelligence alone can be sterile or even dangerous: without wise ends and sound judgment, brilliance may optimize the wrong goals, rationalize harmful choices, or produce clever solutions that ignore human costs. The aphorism thus elevates wisdom as the governing virtue that directs talent toward genuinely good outcomes.