It's a double-edged sword.

A properly disciplined person is capable of great things according to the measure of his intellectual power and his discipline. However, without discipline, that extra horsepower can be a force multiplier for error, and more intricate rationalizations can make it easy to lodge yourself in a web of false justifications.

This is one reason why the ancients and the medievals always emphasized the importance of the virtues. Intelligence is just potential. What we want is knowledge and ultimately wisdom. But there is no wisdom without virtue. Without virtue, a man is deficient and corrupt. His intellect is darkened. His mental operations dishonest. His hold on reality deformed. Virtue is freedom; a man of vice is not free, but lorded over by each vice that wounds him and holds him hostage. His intellect is not free to operate properly. Good actions are strangled and stifled, because his intentions are corrupt, because his impure will cripples and twists the operations of his intellect, because his vices dominate him and cause disintegration.

Without virtue, we are but savages and scum.

Idk about the modern meaning of virtue but doesn't "virtus" in roman mean something like "bravery" and "manliness". (Probably cognate to sanskrit "vIryam"