Intelligence Quotes

There is a time for faith, Bishop, and a time for action. It would be a foolish man who stood on a battlefield and faced an army with a Bible in his hands. We are here to do the bidding of our Lord Almighty, but it is through deeds, as well as piety, that we serve Him.

~ Robyn Young

Studies show that the IQ range of most creative people is surprisingly narrow, around 120 to 130. Higher IQs can perform certain kinds of tasks better--logic, feats of memory, and so on. But if the IQ is much higher or lower than that, the window of creativity closes. Nonetheless, for some reason we believe more is better, so people yearn for tip-top IQs, and that calls for bigger memories. A fast, retentive memory is handy, but no skeleton key for survival.

~ Diane Ackerman

Our civilization will, of course, be playing God in an ultimate sense of the phrase: evolving a greater intelligence than currently exists on earth. It behooves us to be a considerate creator, wise to the world and its fragile nature, sensitive to the needs for stable footings that will prevent backsliding -- and keep that house of cards we call civilization from collapsing.

~ William H. Calvin

Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith

To struggle against darkness is not to blunder ignorantly; intelligence is needed to generate right action. Wisdom guides whether to act or not, and if so how. Sometimes darkness is overwhelming and intelligent action is required. Sometimes silence and inaction is required, but a silence which is the result of intelligence is different from that born of ego states such as pride, fear and laziness.

~ Belsebuub

Genius, throughout history, has been found difficult to classify because it varies in amount: It's rare to find a genius in the context of the noun, but most people, if not all, have a bit of genius in them in the context of the adjective.

~ Criss Jami

Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.

~ Clare B. Dunkle

If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for centuries, perhaps it would have turned into something extremely precious.

~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, so that he would see whether I knew myself or not. The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me.

~ Robert K. Massie

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

~ Gary L. Francione

What are wits for unless a man uses them?

~ Ellis Peters

I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have shown him far less skepticism. For we should have perceived his motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby.

~ H.g. Wells

Deep” to me connotes intellectual rigor, not fashionable obscurity or the unnecessarily academic.

~ Alex Payne

It was an accident that has endowed man with intelligence. He has made use of it: he invented stupidity.

~ Rémy De Gourmont

The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about.

~ Eileen Cook

Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed.It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses... at least that's what thingummy said.

~ Stephen Fry

It is impossible to imagine existence void of any intelligence.

~ Kedar Joshi

The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent interest in the visitor with the growth of collections that was associated with empire and middle-class affluence. Attendance at museums was as much associated with moral improvement as with explanation of the human or natural world.

~ Richard Fortey

I will use my mind, not just my regular brain lobes.

~ Peter Bognanni

Muscle is good, but craft is better

~ Wace

People wonder why I always dress professionally. I want to be admired for my intelligence, instead of my body.

~ Bianca Frazier

A mind that trusts itself is light on its feet.

~ Nathaniel Branden

Intelligence is perhaps but a malady, -a beautiful malady; the oysters's pearl.

~ Rémy De Gourmont

The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense.

~ James Gould Cozzens

Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself

~ Philip Roth

At Childerstown High School and at college he had never led his class nor taken prizes; but, without being aware that he did, he really blamed this on his failure to work hard, or any harder than he needed to. . . . What he did not know, what Paul Bonbright, among others, showed him, was that those abilities of his that got him, without distinction but also without much exertion, through all previous lessons and examinations, were not first rate abilities handicapped by laziness, but second rate, by no degree of effort or assiduity to be made the equal of abilities like Bonbright's.

~ James Gould Cozzens

A critical attitude, like activity, is one of the fundamental characteristics of our time. Both are interdependent. If the critical attitude should dwindle, there would be more peace and less intelligence, to the benefit of the essential. Neither criticism nor activity, however, can steer the course in such a direction - this means that higher forces are involved.

~ Ernst Jünger

Watson represents merely a step in the development of smart machines. Its answering prowess, so formidable on a winter afternoon in 2011, will no doubt seem quaint in a surprisingly short time.

~ Stephen Baker

Stay away from negative people. They have a problem for every solution.

~ Albert Einstein

I'm living in a world of goldfish.

~ Mycroft Holmes

Nothing imaginative ever happens to five people at once, because each is up to only one-fifth of his personal intelligence and perception. A crowd is never equal to the intelligence of any one of its members.

~ Walter Van Tilburg Clark

It's hard to pin down what my actual [IQ] score might be. It's silly to think that people even have one set IQ and that it's precisely measurable. My lowest scores probably reflect less than my maximum effort, and my highest scores probably grant me some extra points due to crazily high levels of diligence plus vast experience with these tests. It doesn't really matter unless we want to turn IQ testing into a reality show sport.

~ Rick Rosner

She was born under the sign of Gemini. And that stands for the good and evil twin. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both hiding and residing inside her heart. Her good twin was not bad at all. But her evil twin was even better, and showed up to be way too fatal!

~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I'm a sucker for sweetness. Intelligence, creativity and a sense of humor mean little to me if a person isn't also kind.

~ Scott Stabile

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

~ George Bernard Shaw

I think I only appear smart by staying quiet as often as possible.

~ Sally Rooney

It's a strange idea people have that thinking makes one intelligent.

~ Marty Rubin

We decided to go back to basics and put the frighteners on some snouts.Really?We adopted a proactive intelligence-gathering policy utilising appropriate stakeholders in the community and pre-established covert human intelligence sources.And nobody can put a frightener on a covert human quite like Lesley can.

~ Ben Aaronovitch