When Nasrudin was a child, he was forever asking his father difficult questions. One day his father became so embarrassed by his inability to answer that he lost his temper. “Don’t you know that precocious children grow up to become complete fools?!” he snapped. “Father,” replied young Nasrudin, “you never told me that you were a child genius.”

From Idries Shah’s The World of Nasrudin, London: The Octagon Press, 2003, p. 287.