quotations about intelligence
Brains in the head saves blisters on the feet.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.
JONATHAN STROUD
Ptolemy's Gate
Here I had tried a straightforward extrapolation of technology, and found myself precipitated over an abyss. It's a problem we face every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own. When this happens, human history will have reached a kind of singularity -- a place where extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied -- and the world will pass beyond our understanding.
VERNOR VINGE
True Names and Other Dangers
However it occurs, the detection of intelligent life beyond the Earth would change forever our outlook on the universe. At the very least, it would prove that intelligence does have some survival value--a reassurance worth having after a session with the late news.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!
Man is man because he chanced to develop intelligence instead of instinct; otherwise he would to this day have remained among the anthropoid apes. He has turned away from nature, become unnatural, as it were, disliked the earth upon which he found himself, and changed the face of it somewhat to his liking.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words.
ALFRED BINET
Les Idées modernes sur les enfants
Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.
H. G. WELLS
The Time Machine
Intelligence has no attachment to the opinion it has formed, but only to the truth it may contain; and, knowing that error insinuates itself under the guise of truth, through the same inlets by which truth is admitted, it is ever diffident of its attainments, and blesses the detector of errors as a benefactor and a friend.
LADY M. W. MONTAGU
attributed, Day's Collacon
They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth.
ANONYMOUS
Popol Vuh
We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Bite-Size Einstein
I believe in "intelligence," and I believe also that there are inherited differences in intellectual ability, but I do not believe that intelligence is a simple scalar endowment that can be quantified by attaching a single figure to it--an I.Q. or the like.
PETER MEDAWAR
Advice to a Young Scientist
Intellectual force is qualitatively the first and foremost productive force, and concern for its rapid growth should be the ardent concern of all classes.
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Intelligence is power; it is the flame behind the spark of intrigue. Find out all the facts and stamp out the fire. Demystify.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Mr. Harrington's Washing
Ingelligence has its rights before those of force; force without intelligence is nothing. In barbarous ages the man of stoutest sinews was the chieftain; now the general is the most intelligent of the brave.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
attributed, Day's Collacon
The loss of sense adds as much beauty to the world as its acquisition.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
People of a lofty intelligence, who look at things from a human point of view, generally make their philosophy to consist in bravely bearing the reverses brought about by circumstances; and their honor, in keenly resenting the pains which come to them through human agency.
MME. SWETCHINE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?
JOHN KEATS
letter to George and Georgiana Keats, April 1819
So far as I can remember, there's not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
attributed, A Brief History of Disbelief
You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral