Parenting & Family Quote by James Newman

Newman’s line gently punctures a very adult obsession: the idea that intelligence only counts when it comes with credentials. Coming from an astronaut, it lands with extra bite. Spaceflight is the ultimate temple of expertise, where checklists and equations keep you alive. So when someone from that world says kids can rival scientists in wisdom, he’s not romanticizing ignorance; he’s separating two kinds of knowing.

The intent is corrective. “Wisdom” here isn’t technical mastery, it’s pattern-recognition about people, fear, honesty, and limits - the stuff that tends to get sanded down by professional life. Children blurt out what adults negotiate around. They ask the question everyone is avoiding. They notice when the emperor is underdressed. Scientists, at their best, do something similar: they strip away social convenience in favor of what’s testable and true. Newman pairs them because both can be unembarrassed by hierarchy.

The subtext is also a warning about the cultural overvaluation of “smartness” as performance. Scientists can be brilliant and still miss the obvious when institutions, incentives, or ego get involved. Children can be naïve and still deliver clean moral clarity because they haven’t learned the sophisticated art of self-justification.

Context matters: mid-to-late 20th century space culture married wonder to bureaucracy. Newman’s profession signals respect for expertise while reminding us that insight isn’t a gated community. Sometimes the sharpest truth arrives without footnotes - and the grown-ups should be secure enough to hear it.