Quotes about intelligence (2406 quotes, page 24)

“Real sexiness is about confidence, intelligence, mystery, art and passion.”

Kate Nash (1987) English pop singer and actor

Source: The Independent, Kate, Nash, Kate Nash: 'Real sexiness is about art, mystery and intelligence', 29 October 2010 https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/kate-nash-real-sexiness-is-about-art-mystery-and-intelligence-2119279.html,

Confidence , Art , Self-confidence , Passion

“The average successful banker is by no means so intelligent and resourceful a man as is the average successful business man. Yet the banker through his control of credit practically controls the average business man.”

Henry Ford book My Life and Work

Source: My Life and Work (1922), Chapter XII, Money - Master or Servant

Business , Success

“I’m shocked at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life... Of course, secularists are desperate to find life in outer space, as they believe that would provide evidence that life can evolve in different locations and given the supposed right conditions! The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!... And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—the Savior of mankind. Jesus did not become the “GodKlingon” or the “GodMartian!””

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the “Godman” as our Savior. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that we see the Father through the Son (and we see the Son through His Word). To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is just totally wrong. An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race—human beings who are all descendants of Adam.

"We'll find a new Earth within 20 years" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/20/well-find-a-new-earth-within-20-years/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 20, 2014)
2010s, Around the World with Ken Ham

God , History , Search , Perfection

“Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 100
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)

Stupidity , Training , Making love , Failure

“If, as I maintain and firmly believe, there is no objective definition of intelligence, and what we call intelligence is only a creation of cultural fashion and subjective prejudice, what the devil is it we test when we make use of an intelligence test?”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"Thinking About Thinking" in Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1975
General sources

Fashion , Making love

“Open your story-cube on the way home and ask it to tell you about causality violation. I did once, because I asked the same question you did. Why should I be limited? What right does the universe have to say what I can and can’t do? I’m intelligent. The universe is just a lot of hydrogen and dirt, going through the motions. But in this instance the universe has the final say.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Introduction to Part 4 (p. 267)
House of Suns (2008)

Home , Question , Universe , Way

“That’s the key to modern Britain … only the mentally castrated are eligible for praise and awards. It’s against the law to be intelligent! The dumb have inherited the earth. Because of this, British arts are controlled by completely limited possibilities, and the same faces appear everywhere.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

CULTURE Pop Icon Morrissey Says Diversity is Not a Strength https://summit.news/2019/06/24/pop-icon-morrissey-says-diversity-is-not-a-strength/?fbclid=IwAR398wYgRpEduvLPMg8qiO9WQNVnZl3LaNydJ8Bx1-DTF33ahE2rVTHFKuE, June 24 2019
In interviews etc., About politics and society

Appearance , Law , Art

“The moment you meet a person of another religion whom you consider to be as good, as intelligent, and as religious as you are, you will never be the same.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

How Can a Religious Person Tolerate Other Religions? https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V24N02_13.pdf, 1990.
1990s

Religion , Personality

“Whether France or Italy or Germany or England has made the greatest contribution in the history of modern civilisation—however that speculative controversy may be settled, this at least is certain, that those are not wrong who hold that Germany's high and strict standard of competency, the purity and vigour of her administration of affairs, her splendid efforts and great success in all branches of science, her glories—for glories they are—in art and literature, and the fixed strength of character and duty in the German people entitle her national ideals to a supreme place among the greatest-ideals that now animate and guide the world. Do not let us forget all that. German ambition is a perfectly intelligible and even lofty ambition.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1911/nov/28/morocco#column_384 in the House of Lords during the Agadir Crisis (28 November 1911)
1910s

History , Success , Forgetting , People

“The evils of a military system, which, after all, every day must attenuate, are light compared with the evils of an anarchic conservatism reinstated in central Europe. Divided Germany means preponderating Russia. What can be more desirable in the interests of the highest civilisation than the interposition in the heart of the European state-system, of a powerful, industrious, intelligent, and progressive people, between the western nations and the half-barbarous Russian swarms? To the careful observer of the history of modern Europe it is plain that increasing vigour and self-conscious strength in Germany are other words for the spread eastwards of the best of those ideas, the most durable of those civilising elements, in which the difference of historic development has enabled England and France to anticipate her.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Fortnightly Review (September 1870), p. 371
1870s

History , Light , People , Heart

“Sooner or later, our entire industry will be operated by AI (artificial intelligence) and robots, not humans.”

Liu Qiangdong (1973) Chinese businessman

Reuters, Robots will replace humans in retail, says China's JD.com, Emma, Thomasson, April 17, 2018 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-jd-com-retail/robots-will-replace-humans-in-retail-says-chinas-jd-com-idUSKBN1HO1NJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtechnologyNews+%28Reuters+Technology+News%29,

“We then, who are this new soul, know
Of what we are composed and made,
For the' atomies of which we grow
Are souls, whom no change can invade.
But oh alas, so long, so far,
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They're ours, though they're not we; we are
The intelligences, they the spheres.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Ecstasy, line 45

Soul , Change

“I think political systems will use it [artifical intelligence] to terrorize people.”

Geoffrey Hinton (1947) computer scientist and psychologist

about artificial intelligence https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom
Quote

Thinking , People

“Today, empathetic intelligence entails sharing the sorrows of other sentient beings. In our posthuman future, will empathy consist entirely in sharing each other’s joys?”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

"What Is Empathetic Superintelligence?" https://www.abolitionist.com/transhumanism/index.htm presentation, 29 Jan. 2011

Joy , Future

“I have been looking for spontaneous generation for twenty years without discovering it. No, I do not judge it impossible. But what allows you to make it the origin of life? You place matter before life and you decide that matter has existed for all eternity. How do you know that the incessant progress of science will not compel scientists to consider that life has existed during eternity, and not matter? You pass from matter to life because your intelligence of today cannot conceive things otherwise. How do you know that in ten thousand years, one will not consider it more likely that matter has emerged from life? You move from matter to life because your current intelligence, so limited compared to what will be the future intelligence of the naturalist, tells you that things cannot be understood otherwise. If you want to be among the scientific minds, what only counts is that you will have to get rid of a priori reasoning and ideas, and you will have to do necessary deductions not giving more confidence than we should to deductions from wild speculation.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Original: (fr) La génération spontanée, je la cherche sans la découvrir depuis vingt ans. Non, je ne la juge pas impossible. Mais quoi donc vous autorise à vouloir qu'elle ait été l'origine de la vie? Vous placez la matière avant la vie et vous faites la matière existante de toute éternité. Qui vous dit que, le progrès incessant de la science n'obligera pas les savants, qui vivront dans un siècle, dans mille ans, dans dix mille ans... à affirmer que la vie a été de toute éternité et non la matière.? Vous passez de la matière à la vie parce que votre intelligence actuelle, si bornée par rapport à ce que sera l'intelligence des naturalistes futurs, vous dit qu'elle ne peut comprendre autrement les choses. Qui m'assure que dans dix mille ans on ne considérera pas que c'est de la vie qu'on croira impossible de ne pas passer à la matière? Si vous voulez être au nombre des esprits scientifiques, s, qui seuls comptent, il faut vous débarrasser des idées et des raisonnements a priori et vous en tenir aux déductions nécessaires des faits établis et ne pas accorder plus de confiance qu'il ne faut aux déductions de pures hypothèses."

As quoted in Pasteur et la philosophie (2004), by Patrice Pinet, p. 63

Partially quoted in Louis Pasteur : Free Lance of Science (1950) by René Dubos, p 396

Confidence , Future , Self-confidence , Idea

“What is the purpose of being really intelligent if not to have the substance of what you want without mistaking it for the shadow?”

Robert Sheckley book Welcome to the Standard Nightmare

Welcome to the Standard Nightmare (p. 102)
Short fiction, The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1978)

“Truth enlightens man's intelligence and shapes his freedom.”

Pope John Paul II Veritatis Splendor

Veritatis Splendor §1
Veritatis Splendor (1993)

Truth , Freedom

“The functional regions of the brain which subserve physical agony, the "pain centres", and the mainly limbic substrates of emotion, appear in phylogenetic terms to be remarkably constant in the vertebrate line. The neural pathways involving serotonin, the periaquaductal grey matter, bradykinin, dynorphin, ATP receptors, the major opioid families, substance P etc all existed long before hominids walked the earth. Not merely is the biochemistry of suffering disturbingly similar where not effectively type-identical across a wide spectrum of vertebrate (and even some invertebrate) species. It is at least possible that members of any species whose members have more pain cells exhibiting greater synaptic density than humans sometimes suffer more atrociously than we do, whatever their notional "intelligence."”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

1.9 The Taste of Depravity https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon1.htm#taste
The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Family , Pain , Suffering , Appearance

“Emotional intelligence is the foundation of leadership. It balances flexibility with toughness, vision with passion, compassion with justice.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Mindfulness Meditation for Corporate Leadership and Management (2017)

Passion , Justice

“As people surrender the power to build the institutions they want, which would enable lives that make sense to them, the system as a whole sacrifices the intelligence it needs: it loses its minds.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 413, entry on Scale https://leanlogic.online/scale/

Sense , People , Making love

“My dear young friends … I believe in you. I have grown increasingly convinced that your generation has the capacity to transform the dawning century into an era of peace and dialogue. You have the means of reconciling our fractured humanity with itself and with the natural world.… You are the first generation of truly global citizens. The problems that you face today were not created by you. My generation and that of your parents … are the problem generations. You must be the solution finding generation! Make good use of collective intelligence, based on sharing. And above all be the generation that acts. You have the capacity to lead humanity towards a renewed form of fraternity, justice and solidarity….”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Peace , Justice , Nature , Problem

“A key measure of emotional intelligence is knowing that every virtue taken to its extreme becomes a vice.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 89

“Women who have the option of being economically self-sustaining will increasingly want your son to also have emotional and relationship intelligence.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 82

Self-confidence , Women

“I have pointed out already how ideas seep down to wider and commoner levels of intelligence and feeling until at last they are believed to be solid realities.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

Source: Man and Time (1964), Ch. 7, p. 159

Idea , Reality , Feeling

“If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)

Truth

“The intuition is not a welling forth of love to people and, therefore, an understanding of them. Much that is called the intuition is recognition of similarities and the possession of a clear analytical mind. Intelligent people who have lived in the world for some time and who have experienced much and who have contacted many other people can usually sum up with facility the problems and dispositions of others, provided they are interested. This they must not, however, confound with the intuition.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

Time , Understanding , People , Problem

“All groups involved in esoteric work have their own dharma or duty and all have their peculiar objective. In order that you may clearly vision what you, as aspirants to discipleship have to do, and so intelligently cooperate, I will concisely state the purpose:”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for a writer to psychoanalyze herself or try to explain why she writes what she writes—it’s a reductive way of looking at oneself and one’s work. Readers really participate in the writing of a book. As a writer I’m giving the reader signs to help create the story with me. The reader is bringing his or her own memories, intelligence, preconceptions, prejudices, likes, dislikes. So the characters in your copy of the book are going to look and sound different than in mine. I have my own ideas, but once the book is out there it’s not really mine anymore, and my own idea isn’t any more valid than yours. And then I begin the long process of disengaging.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On how writers should avoid analyzing their own work in “Donna Tartt on The Goldfinch, Inspiration, and the Perils of Literary Fame” https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a29022016/donna-tartt-goldfinch-interview/ in Town & Country (2019 Sep 12)

Help , Thinking , Books , Memory

“Now, what is meant by the union between Church and State? ... I understand by it that authority is to be not merely political; that Government is to be not merely an affair of force, but is to recognize its responsibility to the Divine Power. Sir, we have discarded the divine right of Kings, and properly discarded it, because the divine right of Kings led to the abuse of supernatural power by individuals; but an intelligent age will never discard the divine right of Government. If Government is not divine, it is nothing. It is a mere affair of the police-office, of the tax-gatherer, of the guard-room.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1868/apr/03/adjourned-debate#column_917 in the House of Commons (3 April 1868)

Age , Understanding

“Look at the solar system, and look at the Earth. On Earth, there are many intelligent species, but only one has achieved technology. Right here in the journey of our own solar system, there is a very, very powerful message that says here's how we should look for alien life, small and big. So yeah, microbes are talking and we are listening, and they are taking us, one planet at a time and one moon at a time, towards their big brothers out there. And they are telling us about diversity, they are telling us about abundance of life, and they are telling us how this life has survived thus far to reach civilization, intelligence, technology and, indeed, philosophy.”

Nathalie Cabrol (1963) French American astrobiologist

Source: How Mars might hold the secret to the origin of life https://www.ted.com/talks/nathalie_cabrol_how_mars_might_hold_the_secret_to_the_origin_of_life (March 2015)

Life , Time

“I think learning about women coders is absolutely important. It’s part of our history. There’s so much in this world that we don’t cover, and I think it’s so important to know that these amazing, incredible, intelligent women were severely over looked…because they were women.”

Chanelle Peloso (1994) Canadian actress

The Bletchley Circle : San Francisco | Interview with Chanelle Peloso as Hailey Yarner https://www.bradfordzone.co.uk/the-bletchley-circle-san-francisco-interview-with-chanelle-peloso-as-hailey-yarner/ (19 July 2018)

History , Learning , Women , Thinking

“I am sure that no more certain method, not only of dechristianizing, but demoralizing the youth of the classes who send their children to the Universities could be found than subjecting them to the influence of tutors who would start with the idea that all beliefs should be submitted for free selection to the consciences and intelligences of their pupils.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech in the House of Lords (8 May 1871) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1871/may/08/committee#column_346
1870s

Children , Universe , Youth , Idea

“People, in general, are unaware of the danger they are in, that with no way to personally go into space, no need for their labor in the face of robotic artificial intelligence, and no way to gain an ownership share in the industry, they will be left behind both economically and politically, unless steps are taken during the startup period.”

Sheyene Gerardi Venezuelan actor and model

[NASA CLASS Announces Collaboration With Actress Sheyene Gerardi, http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=38c46884-5abc-491a-89aa-c9bb0b71195c]

Way , Personality , People

“There is no lack of bravery in the ranks of our armed forces, but bureaucratic cowardice rules in our intelligence establishment”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

as well as at the higher levels of military command
Source: 2000s, Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World (2002), p. 196

“I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)

Peace , Country , People , Suffering

“[E]lections to the supreme power having upon some occasions produced the most destructive contentions, many states would take refuge from a return of the same calamities, in a rule of succession; and no rule presents itself so obvious, certain, and intelligible, as consanguinity of birth.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. II, Book VI, Ch. I.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

Birth , Success

“Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of intelligent effort.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Effort , Deep

“Many sophisticated, intelligent people lack wisdom and common sense.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Sense , Wisdom , People

“If you are going to make first contact with an intelligent alien race,” said Cantabrigia Five, “dropping huge strip-mining robots into their homeland might not be your best move.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

“Five Thousand Years Later” (p. 830)
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

“We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

Free the Airwaves! (2002)

Education

“An intelligent woman herself, the Duchess had overestimated the Marshal’s intelligence. Not an ambitious woman, she had underestimated his ambition. So are many misread by other’s lights.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Singer from the Sea (1999), Chapter 11, “Various Visitations” (p. 174)

Light

“Arrogance complicates words, because it believes that intelligence is only for the chosen few. Elegance transforms complex thoughts into something that everyone can understand.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About Elegance

Understanding

“Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Diplomatic Immunity (2002), Chapter 2 (p. 32)

Stupidity

“Beauty is observed, intelligence attracts, sympathy intrigues, sweetness conquers, but simplicity falls in love.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La bellezza si osserva, l'intelligenza attrae, la simpatia incuriosisce, la dolcezza conquista, ma la semplicità innamora.
Source: prevale.net

Beauty , Love

“The basic elements that make a person more or less interesting are: intelligence and character.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Gli elementi fondamentali che rendono più o meno interessante una persona sono: l'intelligenza e il carattere.
Source: prevale.net

Personality

“You are intelligent, sweet, elegant, charming, erotic, sensual and transgressive. You are what creates an obsessive seduction.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Sei intelligente, dolce, elegante, affascinante, erotica, sensuale e trasgressiva. Sei tutto ciò che crea una seduzione ossessiva.
Source: prevale.net

“The beauty of a woman attracts you, her intelligence fascinates you, sympathy intrigues you, but the difficulty in having her seduces you.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La bellezza di una donna ti attrae, la sua intelligenza ti affascina, la simpatia ti incuriosisce, ma la difficoltà ad averla ti seduce.
Source: prevale.net

Beauty

“Intelligence is sexy par excellence.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'intelligenza è sexy per eccellenza.
Source: prevale.net

“The idiot thinks he is intelligent, cunning, and even an authentic person, when reality proves just the opposite.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'idiota pensa di essere intelligente, astuto e persino una persona autentica, quando la realtà dimostra esattamente l'opposto.
Source: prevale.net

Personality , Thinking , Reality

“An intelligent person questions everything, even himself.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Una persona intelligente mette in discussione tutto, anche se stessa.
Source: prevale.net

Question , Personality

“The musical note is the language of intelligence. Intelligence speaks wherever there is poetry, music and song. Colour is part of it. We love colours because we come from colour. Colour and sound.”

J. Posadas (1912–1981) Argentine Trotskyist (1912-1981)

On the Socialist Future of Humanity, 1981

Music , Love , Parting

“To the limits of my capabilities, I have tried to find a possibility of evolution as an answer to all life. But, it simply will not work without intelligent intervention.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

WotansVolk
Focus Fourteen

Life

“In the tradition of the ancients and of many great thinkers of our race, I am a Deist. Echoing the words of far greater thinkers than myself, I see an intelligent motivating force throughout the universe and behind Nature's Laws.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

WotansVolk
Focus Fourteen

Universe , Motivation , Law , Nature

“Where I kick myself is where I think I actually contributed to the myth of the intelligence services being very good.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

As quoted in Halliwell's Film Companion https://archive.org/details/halliwellswhoswh00hall/page/280/mode/2up (1985) by Leslie Halliwell, p. 281

Thinking

“But no one, no matter how intelligent, could make good inferences from bad data.”

Charles Sheffield book Transcendence

Source: The Heritage Universe, Transcendence (1992), Chapter 11 (p. 126)

“The cosmic consciousness is linked with your soul or with one tapped in their intuitive abilities. All the geniuses can be classified into this last stage of the mind and only few people have achieved that experience of the highest type of intelligence. Some we call gods, prophets, saints and others are called geniuses.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Soul , God , People

“All you need in love and from your significant one is respect only. Leave beauty and intelligence at last.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Beauty , Love

“Being rich is associated with being intelligent in our society. Thus, all the billionaires and millionaires make sense every time they talk.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Time , Sense

“An animal doesn’t need to develop curiosity and intelligence if it has no problems that need solving.”

Robert L. Forward book Dragon's Egg

Source: Dragon's Egg (1980), Chapter 1, “Prologue” Section 4 (p. 7)

Animals , Problem

“If you have any restrictions artificially imposed on your own free intelligence, I want this book to be the rubber stamp which reads: The above restriction is hereby removed. ...It is an act of faith.”

Garry Davis (1921–2013) American actor turned peace activist (1921-2013)

My Country is the World (1984)

Faith , Reading , Books

“The fact that spiritual realism, or faith, pertains to the intelligence of the heart and not to that of the mind, enables one to understand that in spirituality, the moral qualification takes precedence over the intellectual qualification, and by far.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 71, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Spiritual life, Faith

Faith , Understanding , Heart

“The cosmic, and more particularly the earthly, function of beauty is to actualize in the intelligent and sensitive creature the Platonic recollection of the archetypes, and thus open the way towards the luminous Night of the one and infinite Essence.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 171, 978-1-93659765-9]
God, Beauty

Night , Beauty , Way

“Love of God is firstly the attachment of the intelligence to the Truth, then the attachment of the will to the Good, and finally the attachment of the soul to the Peace that is given by the Truth and the Good.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 9, 978-1-93659700-0]
God, Reverential fear and love

Soul , God , Peace , Truth

“Consciousness of the Absolute is the prerogative of human intelligence, and also its aim.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2005, Stations of Wisdom, World Wisdom, 127, 978-0-94153218-1]
Human being, Intelligence

“Objective intelligence, free will, virtuous soul: these are the three prerogatives that constitute man.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 97, 978-1-93659765-9]
Human being, Specificities

Soul

“No study of the causes of intelligence has failed to find a substantial heritability.”

Matt Ridley book Genome

Source: Genome (1999), Chapter 6 “Intelligence” (p. 82)

Study

“The greatest compassion is the prevention of human suffering through patience, intelligence, courage and kindness.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Courage , Suffering , Patience

“The poor are like foxes: they need intelligence in order to survive. The rich, however, have power; they don’t need good sense.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Singer from the Sea (1999), Chapter 2, “The Library” (p. 48)

Sense

“The more rules you impose on a creative intelligence, of course, the fewer problems it can solve.”

John Barnes (1957) American science fiction writer

Short fiction, Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh (2012)

Problem

“Prior to studies of unusually intelligent people that showed them to be generally much better adapted and happier than others, the popular belief in the United States was that exceptional intelligence was often associated with exceptional ability to “drive yourself nuts.””

Robyn Dawes (1936–2010) American psychologist

Hence, people believed that genius and lunacy were intimately connected. Perhaps, nearly all of us “drive ourselves a little nuts” by virtue of creating stories that lead us to the illusion that we understand history, other people, causality, and life—when we don’t.
Source: Everyday Irrationality: How Pseudo-Scientists, Lunatics, and the Rest of Us Systematically Fail to Think Rationally (2001), Chapter 7, “Good Stories” (p. 125)

Study , People

“Doesn’t that sound like God to you? This big stupid, invulnerable thing that resembles us and whose creations are more intelligent than it is? The Bible left out that part, but it would explain a great deal.”

Lucius Shepard (1947–2014) writer

Source: Short fiction, The Skinny Girl (2011), p. 453

God , Stupidity , Parting

“Everything that passes in the world, proves to us, in the clearest manner, that it is not governed by an intelligent being.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

Good Sense, or Natural Ideas vs. Supernatural

World

“The fact is that political stupidity is a special kind of stupidity, not well correlated with intelligence, or with other varieties of stupidity.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: Derb Quotes https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/derb-quotes-john-derbyshire/, National Review, November 20, 2003.

Stupidity

“The law has always had difficulty assimilating the implications, if not the very idea, of scientific evidence. Even the most intelligent lawyers, judges, and juries have customarily found it difficult to understand at first.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

Source: DNA: The Story of the Genetic Revolution (2003/2017), Chapter 11, “Genetic Fingerprinting: DNA’s Day in Court” (p. 300)

Law , Understanding , Idea

“My appeal is to respect the people's intelligence and to put before them clear and unequivocal working programs and policies that will be implemented if (I am) chosen to lead the country in the upcoming general election.”

George Vella (1942) Maltese politician

Source: George Vella (2021) cited in " President urges politicians to 'respect people's intelligence' https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/president-urges-politicians-to-respect-peoples-intelligence.921130" on Times of Malta, 13 December 2021.

People , Country

“For Heraclitus, the logos is something that we need to learn to notice if we are to understand the true significance of the world. It manifests itself all around us but, Heraclitus suggests, only a few intelligent people ever realize what is going on.”

Catherine Rowett (1956) Professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia (born 1956)

Source: Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2004), Ch. 5 : Heraclitus

People , Learning , World , Understanding

“Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail.”

Henry Ford book My Life and Work

Source: 1920s, My Life and Work (1922), pp. 19–20. Quoted in Samuel Crowther, "Henry Ford's Problem," The Magazine of Business, vol. 52 (1927), p. 182

Fear , Failure

“I can’t tell you how much happier I’d be meeting a bunch of artificial intelligences if I also happened to have one on my side.”

Alastair Reynolds book On the Steel Breeze

“Can we drop the ‘artificial intelligence’? It’s a bit like me calling you a meat-based processing system.”
Source: On the Steel Breeze (2013), Chapter 29 (p. 312)

“What you encountered was an abomination, a military intelligence. It was designed to be insidious and spiteful and inimical to life, and it wasn’t smart enough to have a conscience.”

Alastair Reynolds book Blue Remembered Earth

Source: Blue Remembered Earth (2012), Chapter 3 (pp. 65-66)

Life

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

“Nature shouldn’t be able to do this, Sunday thought. It shouldn’t be able to produce something that resembled the work of directed intelligence, something artful, when the only factors involved were unthinking physics and obscene, spendthrift quantities of time. Time to lay down the sediments, in deluge after deluge, entire epochs in the impossibly distant past when Mars had been both warm and wet, a world deluded into thinking it had a future. Time for cosmic happenstance to hurl a fist from the sky, punching down through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling through these carefully superimposed layers, drilling the geological chapters like a bullet through a book. And then yesterday more time—countless millions of years—for wind and dust to work their callous handiwork, scouring and abrading, wearing the exposed layers back at subtly different rates depending on hardness and chemistry, util these deliberate-looking right-angled steps and contours began to assume grand and imperial solidity, rising from the depths like the stairways of the gods.
Awe-inspiring, yesterday. Sometimes it was entirely right and proper to be awed. And recognising the physics in these formations, the hand of time and matter and the nuclear forces underpinning all things, did not lessen that feeling. What was she, ultimately, but the end product of physics and matter? And what was her art but the product of physics and matter working on itself?”

Alastair Reynolds book Blue Remembered Earth

Source: Blue Remembered Earth (2012), Chapter 17 (pp. 292-293)

Dependency , God , Books , World

“People did not always love the mountains. Just a few hundred years ago the high mountains were regarded as horrible, monstrous places filling people with terror and fear. The inhabitants near them were seen as awful demons, subhumans. But this attitude got transformed into just the opposite, especially by Romantic writers and painters in the nineteenth century. Seen by the Romantics, high mountains became places of impossible beauty, where the quality of light and the expansive solitary grandeur of the high peaks opened the heart of the individual. A man climbing a mountain became the image of self-conscious intelligence pitted against the eternal indifference of the forces of nature. Compared to these forces of nature, we are nothing save for the will that moves our limbs. Only that will is truly our own.”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 271-272

Mountain , Indifference , Nature , Love

“It will be discovered that a system of exchange between peoples of goods and services will, when intelligently developed, gradually cancel out the need for buying and selling with money.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter VII The Council for Economics

Money , People

“Nothing so effectively economizes effort and intelligence, as distinct from anxiety, as the knowledge that nothing can be done.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter VIII, Section 1, p. 91 (1985)

Knowledge , Effort

“Animals who die for your dinner table die alone, in terror, in sadness and in pain. The killing is merciless and inhumane. … Animals suffer from pain and fear just as much as you do. Most spend their last hours locked in a truck, packed into a cage with hundreds of other terrified animals and then cruelly pushed into a blood soaked death chamber. Animals which are a year old are often far more rational – and capable of logical thought – than six-week-old babies. Pigs and sheep are far more intelligent than small children.”

Vernon Coleman (1946) British doctor

"Twenty One Reasons For Being A Vegetarian" (2007), in vernoncoleman.com http://www.vernoncoleman.com/twentyoner.htm.

Baby , Death , Pain , Children

“You will find, dear boy, on these chivalric adventures of yours, that manly courage and fortitude, even when bolstered by the fortunate possession of an enchanted sword such as Dastagerd, are not quite enough: one requires, as well, the use of logic, reason, deduction, and, in a word—intelligence!”

Lin Carter book Kesrick

Source: Kesrick (1982), Chapter 16, “The Fairy of the Fountain” (p. 105)

Boy , Courage

“[O]ne must have a certain amount of both intelligence and knowledge to be amazed even at the most extraordinary things.”

Jean Ingelow (1820–1897) British writer

Source: Off the Skelligs: A Novel (1872), Ch. 21, p. 356.

Knowledge

“Intellectual is not necessarily intelligent either.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

A Testament (1957)

“I think that everything that is really good and beautiful, the inner, moral, spiritual and sublime beauty in men and their works, comes from God, and everything that is bad and evil in the works of men and in men is not from God, and God does not approve of it.
But I cannot help thinking that the best way of knowing God is to love many things. Love this friend, this person, this thing, whatever you like, and you will be on the right road to understanding Him better, that is what I keep telling myself. But you must love with a sublime, genuine, profound sympathy, with devotion, with intelligence, and you must try all the time to understand Him more, better and yet more. That will lead to God, that will lead to an unshakable faith.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1880, Letter to Theo (Cuesmes, July 1880)

Personality , Understanding , Thinking , Love

“And I have a lot of self-esteem, which is amazing, because I’m probably somebody who wouldn’t necessarily have a lot of self esteem as I am considered a minority and if you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world. And it's going to be really hard to find messages of self-love and support anywhere.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour

Personality , World , Support , Color

“The past and present events in the Universe point towards the fact that the extinction of humans, or any other potential intelligent life, in this space desert is a common physical phenomenon.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Universe , Past , Life

“The person who doesn't talk behind back, but to his face, either hates himself or loves himself. The moron despises it, the intelligent esteems it.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La persona che non parla alle spalle, ma in faccia, o si odia o si ama. Il deficiente la disprezza, l'intelligente la stima.
Source: prevale.net

Hate , Personality , Love

“A person's intelligence is worthless if he is not equipped with the wisdom to use it.”

Titon Rahmawan

Personality , Wisdom

“Wisdom is a combination of intelligence that is based on reasoning skills and supported by the ability to understand other people's points of view.”

Titon Rahmawan

People , Understanding , Support , Wisdom

“A person's ability to see problems from various points of view and then determine solution steps is not a form of ordinary intelligence in general, but a form of wisdom.”

Titon Rahmawan

Personality , Problem , Wisdom