INTELLIGENCE QUOTES
quotations about intelligence
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
WOODROW WILSON
speech to the National Press Club, March 20, 1914
The surest way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others.
FRANCOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Maxims
To be intelligent is not always to be virtuous; and to think is not always to think rightly; intellect and thought are the foundations of power.
W. SWINTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
We live in a culture where being smart is seen as feminine and boring and being stupid as masculine and exciting.
NIOBE WAY
Deep Secrets
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister.
SU SHI
"On the Birth of His Son"
There are some with brains and some without. It makes for a better division of labour.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Baal
The first purpose of intelligence and cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and master of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror.
NOVALIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life--not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue's other and more precise name.
JOHN ERSKINE
The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent
We have, as yet, no definite proof that too much brain, like too much armor, is not one of those unfortunate evolutionary accidents that leads to the annihilation of its possessors.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations
Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.
ALFRED BINET
Les Idées modernes sur les enfants
I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
OSCAR WILDE
The Happy Prince and Other Stories
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
"The Crack Up"
Intelligence forbids tears.
DORIS LESSING
A Man and Two Women
I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Hourses
It is no proof of a man's understanding to be able to confirm whatever he pleases; but to be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is false, this is the mark and character of intelligence.
EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
True Christian Religion
Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence.
ALBERT EDWARD WIGGAM
attributed, Philippine Almanac
She had found the answer to her affliction--conformity! She had already learned to conceal her intelligence. So many of us break our hearts before we learn that.
MARK CLIFTON
Galaxy Magazine, July 1952
A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
SAUL BELLOW
To Jerusalem and Back