Intelligence Quotes
3,880 quotes
"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
"I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better."
"You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace."
"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation."
"It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer."
"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
"The measure of intelligence is the ability to change."
"You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant."
"An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?"This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence"really means: "I cannot bear my doubts."
"A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special."
"Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager."
"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all."
"It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise."
"If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads."
"He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more."
"belief is the death of intelligence."
"Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs."
"Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in."
"Education is no substitute for intelligence."
"I always appear smarter when I dress up in my giant nipple costume. I know this because I'll overhear people say things like, 'At least he's not a complete boob."
"It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."
"Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change."
"The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty."
"Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless."
"You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid"
"Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
"Why do I do anything?' she says. 'I'm educated enough to talk myself out of any plan. To deconstruct any fantasy. Explain away any goal. I'm so smart I can negate any dream."
"I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously."
"In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office."
"I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)"
"Any intelligent person knows that life is a beautiful thing and that the purpose of life is to be happy,"said my father as he watched the three beauties. "But it seems only idiots are ever happy. How can we explain this?"
"Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."
"She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can."
"Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding..."
"Intelligence minus purpose equals stupidity."
"We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are."
"I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control."
"The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way."
"The weak are dominated by their ego, the wise dominate their ego, and the intelligent are in a constant struggle against their ego."
"I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!"
"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough."
"I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady."Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. "There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction."
"The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one's own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop."
"Many much-learned men have no intelligence."
"She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination."
"Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth."
"Jasnah had once defined a fool as a person who ignored information because it disagreed with desired results."
"I don't fancy colors of the face, I'm always attracted to colors of the brain."
"Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism."
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