Quotes about intelligence
page 15

Yevgeny Yevtushenko photo

“Time has a way of demonstrating
The most stubborn are the most intelligent.”

Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1932–2017) Russian poet, film director, teacher

A Career http://books.google.com/books?id=qFSwAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Time+has+a+way+of+demonstrating+The+most+stubborn+are+the+most+intelligent%22&pg=PA63#v=onepage

John Erskine photo
Matilda Joslyn Gage photo

“The State, agent and slave of the Church, has so long united with it in suppression of woman’s intelligence, has so long preached of power to man alone, that it has created an inherited tendency, an inborn line of thought toward repression.”

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898) American abolitionist, writer

Source: Woman, Church and State (1893), p. 543 as quoted in K. M. Talreja, Holy Vedas and Holy Bible: A Comparative Study https://books.google.com/books?id=9qkoAAAAYAAJ, New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan, 2000

George Holmes Howison photo
Sarah Grimké photo
Robert Mueller photo
John Elkann photo

“He is extremely intelligent and has a great sense of responsibility. I've seen, in the past few years, he has managed several crises with extreme dignity and wisdom.”

John Elkann (1976) Italian businessman

Henry Kissinger, "Interview: All In The Family" http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901060703-1207766-2,00.html, Time Magazine, 06-25-2006
About

Gwyneth Paltrow photo

“I think that it’s a very smart decision actually to have women that are capable and intelligent because it appeals to women. You know, so it’s not only a film for fifteen-year-old boys. It’s a film that can relate to a lot of people on a lot of levels. A lot of my girlfriends like it because of the romance or like Scarlett is in the trailer and it is appealing. 'Ooh who is she?”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

and it doesn’t look gratuitous. It looks like there are interesting women in the movie.
Of her role in Iron Man 2; Teen Hollywood http://www.teenhollywood.com/2010/05/03/interview-gwyneth-and-scarlett-iron-mans-ladies (3 May 2010)

Courtney Love photo

“Writing songs has a lot to do with your sexuality. I danced for awhile and just being around that made me realize what people use. And if you grow up blessed with a certain beauty or a certain intelligence that enhances your beauty, you can get into a better position in life.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On songwriting and beauty, The Guardian https://www.newspapers.com/clip/22821312/the_guardian/ (December 11, 1991)
1991–1995

Susie Castillo photo
Aldous Huxley photo
William A. Dembski photo
Richard Bertrand Spencer photo
Mary Midgley photo
Gao Xingjian photo

“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 160

Margaret Sanger photo

“Margaret Sanger: Oh, John you do ask hard questions. I should think, that instead of being impractical, it is really very practical and intelligent and humane.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

One Minute News (1947), interview with British Pathé's John Parsons

Isa Genzken photo
Grant Morrison photo
John McCarthy photo
Joe Biden photo

“It required a lot less energy, intelligence, and competence to run against government than to try to make government work.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 134
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman photo
Ralph Cudworth photo
John Dewey photo

“Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

The American Background http://books.google.com/books?id=akasAAAAIAAJ&q=%22Legislation+is+a+matter+of+more+or+less+intelligent+improvisation+aiming+at+palliating+conditions+by+means+of%22+%22patchwork+policies%22&pg=PA65#v=onepage, Freedom and Culture (1939)
Misc. Quotes

Mobutu Sésé Seko photo
Asger Jorn photo
Joseph Priestley photo

“When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.”

Vol. I : Part I : The Being and Attributes of God, § 1 : Of the existence of God, and those attributes which art deduced from his being considered as uncaused himself, and the cause of every thing else (1772)
Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion (1772–1774)

Benjamin Rush photo

“Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them…”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Provisions of the Last Will and Testament of Dr. James Rush http://books.google.com/books?id=lSowTqXCyyUC&pg=PA13&dq=%22dreaded+by+the+advocates+of+error%22&hl=en&ei=NCJGTP-fBJ-QnwfB8K2uBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=13&ved=0CGQQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&q=%22dreaded%20by%20the%20advocates%20of%20error%22&f=false

Anne Brontë photo
B.K.S. Iyengar photo

“Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.”

B.K.S. Iyengar (1918–2014) Indian yoga teacher and scholar

Source: Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom, p. 12

Al Gore photo
Camille Paglia photo
Chris Martin photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Walt Disney photo
Kage Baker photo

“Edward raises the pointer and places its tip against Alec’s forehead. “What’s the use of having a library in there if you won’t open the books, boy? What’s the good of augmented intelligence if you won’t use it?””

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 26, Section 1 “Child Care in the Cyborg Family, Volume Fifteen: Adolescent Rebellion” (p. 307)

Ray Comfort photo
Nicholas Carr photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo

“The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

As quoted in the [Sri Lanka] Sunday Times (31 December 2000) http://www.sundaytimes.lk/001231/news4.html
2000s and attributed from posthumous publications

Madison Grant photo
Phillip Abbott Luce photo
James Joyce photo
Henry Adams photo
Aron Ra photo
David Fleming photo

“Wisdom is intelligence drenched in culture.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 302, entry on Local Wisdom http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Scott McClellan photo
George Holmes Howison photo
André Maurois photo
MS Dhoni photo

“Dhoni is a very smart man and intelligent captain and manages his resources perfectly. India is blessed to have someone as level-headed as him at the helm.”

MS Dhoni (1981) Indian cricket player

Shoaib Akhtar https://www.scoopwhoop.com/sports/dhoni-quotes/

Jean-Claude Juncker photo

“I am astonished at those who are afraid of the people: one can always explain that what is in the interest of Europe is in the interests of our countries."
"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?"
"There is a single legal personality for the EU, the primacy of European law, a new architecture for foreign and security policy, there is an enormous extension in the fields of the EU's powers, there is Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

Jean-Claude Juncker (1954) Luxembourgian politician

On the Lisbon Treaty, Le Soir L'invité du lundi Jean-Claude Juncker : « Succès objectif, déception atmosphérique », 2 July 2007, Le Soir, 2 July 2007, page 18 Bruno Waterfield, Brendan Carlin: 'Don't tell British about the EU treaty' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/03/weu103.xml, Telegraph, 3 July 2007.
2007

“Charles Péguy, stubborn rancours and mishaps and all, is one of the great souls, one of the great prophetic intelligences of the 20th century. I offer my poem as my homage to the triumph of his 'defeat.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

Notes on The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy, in Collected Poems Penguin Books 1985
Poetry

Simone Weil photo
John Zerzan photo
Henry Adams photo
Warren Buffett photo

“Look for integrity, intelligence and energy.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Rules for success

Maimónides photo
Edward Everett photo
George William Curtis photo
John Bright photo

“To the Working Men of Rochdale: A deep sympathy with you in your present circumstances induces me to address you. Listen and reflect, even though you may not approve. Your are suffering—you have long suffered. Your wages have for many years declined, and your position has gradually and steadily become worse. Your sufferings have naturally produced discontent, and you have turned eagerly to almost any scheme which gave hope of relief. Many of you know full well that neither an act of Parliament nor the act of a multitude can keep up wages. You know that trade has long been bad, and that with a bad trade wages cannot rise. If you are resolved to compel an advance of wages, you cannot compel manufacturers to give you employment. Trade must yield a profit, or it will not long be carried on…The aristocracy are powerful and determined; and, unhappily, the middle classes are not yet intelligent enough to see the safety of extending political power to the whole people. The working classes can never gain it of themselves. Physical force you wisely repudiate. It is immoral, and you have no arms, and little organisations…Your first step to entire freedom must be commercial freedom—freedom of industry. We must put an end to the partial famine which is destroying trade, and demand for your labor, your wages, your comforts, and your independence. The aristocracy regard the Anti-Corn Law League as their greatest enemy. That which is the greatest enemy of the remorseless aristocracy of Britain must almost of necessity be your firmest friend. Every man who tells you to support the Corn Law is your enemy—every man who hastens, by a single hour, the abolition of the Corn Law, shortens by so much the duration of your sufferings. Whilst the inhuman law exists, your wages must decline. When it is abolished, and not till then, they will rise.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Address (17 August 1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp, 81-82.
1840s

David D. Levine photo
Samuel Butler photo
John Hall photo
Julien Offray de La Mettrie photo
Henry Adams photo

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Ervin László photo
John Galsworthy photo
Jorge Luis Borges photo

“Doubt is one of the names of intelligence.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

La duda es uno de los nombres de la inteligencia.
As quoted in Diccionario privado de Jorge Luis Borges (1979) edited by Blas Matamoro

John Green photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
André Maurois photo
John Kenneth Galbraith photo

“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Sydney Morning Herald (22 May 1982), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993), edited by Robert Andrews, p. 972

Nikolai Berdyaev photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
John Townsend Trowbridge photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“Almost all governments and known figures strongly condemned this incident [the September 11 attacks]. But then a propaganda machine came into full force; it was implied that the whole world was exposed to a huge danger, namely terrorism, and that the only way to save the world would be to deploy forces into Afghanistan. Eventually Afghanistan, and, shortly thereafter, Iraq were occupied.… In identifying those responsible for the attack, there were three viewpoints: (1) That a very powerful and complex terrorist group, able to successfully cross all layers of the American intelligence and security, carried out the attack. This is the main viewpoint advocated by American statesmen. (2) That some segments within the U. S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view. (3) It was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation. Apparently, this viewpoint has fewer proponents.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Speech to the United Nations General Assembly http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/09/transcript-of-president-mahmoud-ahmadinejads-un-speech/ (22 September 2010). CNN and other American news agencies reported the emphasized remark as Ahmadinejad's expression of a personal belief.
2010

John Gray photo
Tony Blair photo

“The intelligence is clear: [Saddam Hussein] continues to believe that his weapons of mass destruction programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression. It is essential to his regional power. Prior to the inspectors coming back in, he was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of those weapons.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030225/debtext/30225-05.htm#30225-05_head0, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 400, col. 123.
House of Commons statement on Iraq, 25 February 2003.
2000s

Roger Ebert photo
George W. Bush photo
Toni Morrison photo
Henry Adams photo
Robert T. Kiyosaki photo

“To be the master of money, you need to be smarter than it. Then money will do as it is told. It will obey you. Instead of being a slave to it, you will be the master of it. That is financial intelligence.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Tommy Franks photo
Warren Buffett photo

“Success in investing doesn't correlate with I. Q. once you're above the level of 25. Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble in investing.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

As quoted in Homespun Wisdom from the "Oracle of Omaha" by Amy Stone in BusinessWeek (5 June 1999) http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_27/b3636006.htm

Julian May photo