Schindler's List Intelligence Quotes

This is Schindler's hustle, which we become very familiar with as time goes on. He's able to convince people that what's good for him must be what's good for everyone. Street smarts, you might call it. Stern is onto him, but he doesn't have much choice and Schindler knows it.

Schindler's playing a rather terrible angle here. He knows the Jews are up against the wall. He wants to strip them of their false presumptions about fairness and justice. That way, he gets his money. He's a shrewd businessman with a huge advantage.

Jewish culture valued education and literature, but these skills became useless overnight. "Essential" is apparently in the eye of the beholder. Jewish intellectuals and professors were some of the first victims of the Nazis.

There's smart, and then there's scare-the-pants-off-of-you smart. Schindler knows just how to squeeze the two German yo-yos standing in his way. His well-placed jabs get Stern off of the train just in the nick of time.

The boy points to a man Goeth just shot, fingering him as the chicken thief Goeth's looking for. Goeth falls for it and doesn't bother shooting anyone else. It's a great example of how the Jews—despite their subjugation—can still find ways to preserve life and occasionally beat the Nazis at their own game.

The hustle is on again, this time by getting Goeth to act merciful by appealing to his need for power. It's how a man like Schindler tries to save lives: with savvy and persuasive argument rather than a gun.

Stern is using the factory to save people, and actually doing a reasonably good job of it. So good, in fact, that it catches Schindler by surprise sometimes. Hence his little meltdown here. But he respects Stern's ingenuity and is amazed how Stern can get so many questionable workers on his list. Once Stern gets the unenviable job of working for Goeth, he still manages to advise Oskar about who to bribe and who to watch out for.

Stern's quick thinking in action.

Again, we get a glimpse of what Stern has to do to keep the factory open: bribes, bribes and more bribes, all organized and disguised so well that it gives Schindler a headache just thinking about it. This is how a smart man uses his skills to keep his people alive.

This is an epic piece of horse pucky, delivered on the fly and with the lives of several dozen children at stake. It shows us once again not only how smart Schindler is, but how he can deploy that intelligence on the spot to actively save lives.