Anonymous Proverb...

Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people

An unknown sage…though often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, or Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

Or:

...[Buckle's] thoughts and conversations were always on a high level, and I recollect a saying of his which not only greatly impressed me at the time, but which I have ever since cherished as a test of the mental calibre of friends and acquaintances. Buckle said, in his dogmatic way: "Men and women range themselves into three classes or orders of intelligence; you can tell the lowest class by their habit of always talking about persons, the next by the fact that their habit is always to converse about things; the highest by their preference for the discussion of ideas" ... (Charles Stewart, "Haud immemor. Reminescences of legal and social life in Edinburgh and London. 1850-1900", 1901, p. 33)

The 'Buckle' referred to in the above, Henry Thomas Buckle, the author of the "History of Civilisation,". More about him can be read in this book, and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Thomas_Buckle

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eleanor_Roosevelt

Happy Saturday Everyone…