“Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all."”

— Isaac Asimov , book The Gods Themselves

The Gods Themselves (1972)
Context: "Don't finish, Pete. I've heard it all before. All I have to do is decipher the thinking of a non-human intelligence."
"A better-than-human intelligence. Those creatures from the para-Universe are trying to make themselves understood."
"That may be," sighed Bronowski, "but they're trying to do it through my intelligence, which is better than human I sometimes think, but not much. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, I lie awake and wonder if different intelligences can communicate at all; or, if I've had a particularly bad day, whether the phrase 'different intelligences' has meaning at all."
"It does," said Lamont savagely, his hands clearly bailing into fists within his lab coat pockets. "It means Hallam and me. It means that fool-hero, Dr. Frederick Hallam and me. We're different intelligences because when I talk to him he doesn't understand. His idiot face gets redder and his eyes bulge and his ears block. I'd say his mind stops functioning, but lack the proof of any other state from which it might stop."

Section 1 “Against stupidity...”, Chapter 6, p. 12

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Isaac Asimov 303

American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… 1920–1992

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