Intelligence Quotes

I take my favorite and most promising lads to the theater,” said [Sherlock] Holmes. “I'd say that if they were born into better circumstances many would have grown up to be MP’s, but in truth most are too smart and too honest for Parliament.

~ Dan Simmons

It is not enough to call yourself a 'free thinker' just because you can change your beliefs. A whole mess of people change their beliefs based on what is fashionable rather than what is factual, which, by always following the crowd, would be the complete opposite of the beauty of a free thinker.

~ Criss Jami

It is precisely our plasticity, our long childhood, that prevents a slavish adherence to genetically preprogrammed behavior in human beings more than in any other species… Some substantial adjustment of the relative role of each component of the triune brain is well within our powers.

~ Carl Sagan

Perhaps the locale of the subjunctive mood willone day be found. Will Latins turn out to be extravagantly endowed and English-speaking peoples significantly short-changed in this minor piece of brain anatomy?

~ Carl Sagan

It gets very hard to predict the future once you have smarter-than-human things around. In the same way that it gets very hard for a chimp to predict what is going to happen because there are smarter-than-chimp things around. That’s what the Singularity is: it’s the point past which you expect you can’t see.

~ Nate Soares

Our head is designed to develop our intelligence, to devote ourselves to self- education, self -improvement and to broaden our perspective regarding the world around us

~ Sunday Adelaja

Do dogs feel for humans something akin to religious ecstasy? What other strong or subtle emotions are felt by animals that do not communicate with us?

~ Carl Sagan

Rationality attracts conscientious humans, whereas mysticism attracts fools.

~ Abhijit Naskar

with rare exceptions (chiefly the social insects), mammals and birds are the only organisms to devote substantial attention to the care of their young; an evolutionary development that, through the long period of plasticity which it permits, takes advantage of the large information-processing capability of the mammalian and primate brains. Love seems to be an invention of the mammals.

~ Carl Sagan

In the intelligence community, a rumor was almost as good as a confirmation.

~ Kenneth Eade

The CIA’s offices in London were no secret to the MI6. In fact, the two agencies were practically kissing cousins.

~ Kenneth Eade

I’m the Deputy Director for Operations.”,“Congratulations. A title so classified you can’t even list it on your resumé when they fire you.

~ Kenneth Eade

In addition, human beings have, in the most recent few tenths of a percent of our existence, invented not only extra-genetic but also extrasomatic knowledge: information stored outside our bodies, of which writing is the most notable example.

~ Carl Sagan

The time scale for evolutionary or genetic change is very long. A characteristic period for the emergence of one advanced species from another is perhaps a hundred thousand years; and very often the difference in behavior between closely relatedspecies-say, lions and tigers-do not seem very great... But today we do not have ten million years to wait for the next advance. We live in a time when our world is changing at an unprecedented rate. While the changes are largely of our own making, they cannot be ignored. We must adjust and adapt andcontrol, or we perish.

~ Carl Sagan

Evolution is adventitious and not foresighted. Only through the deaths of an immense number of slightly maladapted organisms are we, brains and all, here today.

~ Carl Sagan

a typical chromosomal DNA molecule in a human being is composed of about five billion pairs of nucleotides… But since there are four different kinds of nucleotides, the number of bits of information in DNA is four times the number of nucleotide pairs. Thus if a single chromosome has five billion (5 X 10^9) nucleotides, it contains twenty billion (2 X 10^10) bits of information… We also see that if more than some tens of billions (several times 10^10) of bits of information are necessary for human survival, extragenetic systems will have to provide them: the rate of development of genetic systems is so slow that no source of such additional biological information can be sought in the DNA.

~ Carl Sagan

Somewhere in the steaming jungles of the Carboniferous Period there emerged an organism that for the first time in the history of the world had more information in its brains than in its genes. It was an early reptile which, were we to come upon it in these sophisticated times, we would probably not describe as exceptionally intelligent… Much of the history of life since the Carboniferous Period can be described as the gradual (and certainly incomplete) dominance of brains over genes.

~ Carl Sagan

It is very difficult to evolve by altering the deep fabric of life, any change there is likely to be lethal. But fundamental change can be accomplished by the addition of new systems on top of old ones.

~ Carl Sagan

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

~ David Lynch

I am likely to fail if I have determined the cost as too high or my intelligence as too low. Yet, if I think about it, the real failure rests in believing either of these to be true.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Imitation is human intelligence in its most dynamic aspect.

~ René Girard

Sight is seeing what's there, vision is seeing what's possible

~ Retin Obasohan

Creativity is about connecting things. The key to genius is knowing how to make those connections.

~ Nor Sanavongsay

Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler did not solve an old problem, they asked a new question, and in doing so they changed the whole basis on which the old questions had been framed.

~ Ken Robinson

The most intelligent or brilliant of us all are not usually the most successful, financially or career wise.A lot depends on the ability of a person to break into circles, meet people, network and interact.A well marketed yam may sell better than a not-so-well marketed Jollof.Do not just stay in the library and read all the books there, lest you become publicly dusty like the books you read.Food for thought!

~ Magnus Nwagu Amudi

Without understanding, there is no life. Either you act, out of understanding or act to develop understanding out of it.

~ Roshan Sharma

To be wise means to know when to stay silent.

~ Kamand Kojouri

They are as smart as they are ruthless. That's why they've been around for all five years.

~ Joe Reyes

what if you've been born more intelligent than others? and you can't force them to understand you, but you can understand them?. then you just need to force yourself on them, and you can map out their axioms and core beliefs and try to transform them. and then map out the fundamental concepts they need to know to understand you. i wish you understood me.

~ Marouane Laassafar

Your brother is a sensitive person. Aesthetically, ethically, and intellectually he is in fact hypersensitive. As a result, it would seem that he was born only to torture himself. He has none of that saving dullness of intelligence which sees little difference between A and B. To him it must be either A or B. And if it is to be A, its shape, degree, and shade of color must precisely match his own conception of it; otherwise he will not accept it. Your brother, being sensitive, is all his life walking on a line he has chosen—a line as precarious as a tight rope. At the same time he impatiently demands that others also tread an equally precarious rope, without missing their footing. It would be a mistake, though, to think that this stems from selfishness. Imagine a world which could react exactly the way your brother expects; that world would undoubtedly be far more advanced than the world as it is now. Consequently, he detests the world which is—aesthetically, intellectually, and ethically—not as advanced as he is himself. That's why it's different from mere selfishness, I think.

~ Sōseki Natsume

If we were to plot the distance between where you are RIGHT NOW and the nearest good idea, it would describe a line too big to fit inside the universe.

~ Brian Clevinger

...I say to you, without pleasure, that this son of ours will be a great man, because -- well -- because he is not very intelligent. He can see only one desire at a time. I said he tested his dreams; he will murder every dream with the implacable arrows of his will. This boy will win to every goal of his aiming; for he can realize no thought, no reason, but his own. And I am sorry for his coming greatness...

~ John Steinbeck

Creativity is a high level of thinking and intelligence.

~ Pearl Zhu

If you want to foresee the behavior of someone, their personality is a better predictor than their intelligence.

~ Luigina Sgarro

The brain isn't very much like a computer, although it doesn't do a bad job, considering that it's built by unskilled labor and programmed more by pure chance than anything else.

~ Joe Haldeman

It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence.

~ Criss Jami

Remember what punishments befell us in this world when we ourselves did not cherish learning nor transmit it to other men.

~ Ælfrēd Of Wessex

Intelligence reports and local folklore together perpetuated tales of his bloody adventures across the rim worlds and badlands of Terran space. It was his trademark and often over the last two decades, history proclaimed in large bloody letters that ‘Kilroy woz ‘ere.

~ Christina Engela

Well, the terrible fact is that though we are all more or less thinking of something or other all the time, some of us are thinking more and some less.Some brains are battling and working and remembering and puzzling things over all the time and other brains are just lying down, snoring and occasionally turning over. It is to the lazy minds that I am now speaking, and from my own experience I imagine this includes nineteen people out of every twenty. I am one of that clan myself and always have been.

~ Ted Hughes

Intellectually secure people do not need to show anyone how smart they are. They are empirical and seek truth. Intellectually insecure people need to show everyone how smart they are. They are egotistical and seek triumph.

~ Kevin Ashton