I haven't seen the movie yet (I plan to tho), but I did read his biography by Carl Sandburg several years ago.   It always amazes me how intelligent and clear thinking some people are, having had no special upbringing, environment, or particular advantages.   THAT just blows my mind!   I think about it when I read our great documents like the constitution, bill of rights, or declaration of independence.   How could these men come up with these great social ideas?   Unfortunately, when I think about those wise men, and then compare them to the hodge podge we have today in congress, it's saddening; almost like we're going backwards in some ways.

I worked among very smart computer people most of my career; many with PhDs and other high level degrees, who were scientists, authors, and innovators.  To this day, one of the smartest persons I ever knew, however, was a kid I hired from northern California who was raised on a small family dairy farm.  He had purchased a computer kit back in the 70's for $400, and had to orchestrate it's delivery and construction in secret because his parents would never have approved of him spending his money on such nonsense.   Once when my company had implemented a new version of UNIX, the guys in the lab had developed a new "uncrackable" algorithm for password encryption.   This was a team of mainly Stanford computer science grads. They released it to production for testing and debugging.   To my friend, just saying it was uncrackable set him in motion.   He came to me about 2 hours later with a program he had written to decipher any password!   He was 19 at the time.

I won't name him here, but I think some of you might be familiar with his name.   When I last talked to him 10 or so years ago, he was chief scientist for a large well known corporation.   He still has only a HS diploma, and has never taken a college level course.