Quotes about intelligence page 4
“God gives life to human beings who in turn give birth to artificial intelligence.”
Newton Lee American computer scientist
The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019
“Death can be very unpleasant when you're intelligent.”
Aaron Guzikowski tv series Raised by Wolves
Raised by Wolves, season 1, episode 4. Character Father.
Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality
Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 71
Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality
Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 60
Marilyn Frye book The Politics of Reality
Source: The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory (1983), p. 59
Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism
Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)
Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire
Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/
“The attractive woman is simply complicated, strictly intelligent and damn charming.”
Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer
Original: La donna attraente è semplicemente complicata, rigorosamente intelligente e dannatamente affascinante.
Source: prevale.net
“Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned
Source: The Beautiful and Damned
“Son intelligence rendait sa splendeur encore plus terrifiante.”
Amélie Nothomb (1967) Belgian francophone writer
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes
“The universe is an intelligence test”
Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist
As quoted in Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977) by Robert Anton Wilson, p. 170
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet
Variant: Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned
“Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.”
Aldous Huxley book Brave New World
Source: Brave New World
Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian
From Her Tours and CDs, The Notorious C.H.O. Tour
Context: “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. Especially women's and gay men's culture. It's all about how you have to look a certain way, or else you're worthless. You know, when you look in the mirror and think, ‘Ugh, I'm so ugly, I'm so fat, I'm so old.’ Don't you know that's not your authentic self? But that is billions upon billions of dollars of advertising. Magazines, movies, billboards, all geared to make you feel shitty about yourself, so that you will take your hard earned money and spend it at the mall on some turn-around crème that doesn't turn around shit. If you don't have self-esteem, you will hesitate before you do anything in your life. You will hesitate to go for the job you want to go for. You will hesitate to ask for a raise. You will hesitate to call yourself an American. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue.
“Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!”
Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher
What is Enlightenment? (1784)
Variant: Have the courage to use your own reason- That is the motto of enlightenment.
Source: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
Context: Enlightenment is man’s leaving his self-caused immaturity. Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-caused if it is not caused by lack of intelligence, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's intelligence without being guided by another. Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own intelligence! is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.
Norbert Wiener book God & Golem, Inc.
Source: God & Golem, Inc. (1964), p. 69
Source: The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society
Context: [T]he future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence. The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.
“Intelligent life on other planets? I'm not even sure there is on earth!”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Sam Harris book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Source: Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
"Sermons in Cats the musical"
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)
“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.”
Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace
Source: War and Peace
Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer
Source: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), p. 284.
Context: It appeared that the one area in which Sir Bob excelled was anxiety. He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others’ mediocrity—suggesting that a certain kind of intelligence may at heart be nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction.
“Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“Anger, intelligence, and wit are ultimately more seductive than zero percent body fat.”
Maria Raha (1972) American journalist
Source: Cinderella's Big Score: Women of the Punk and Indie Underground
“Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!”
Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems
Source: Howl and Other Poems
“Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.”
James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Notebook entry, Paris (28 March 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, 2002, <small> ISBN 0-192-83353-7</small>], p. 104
Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon
Source: One Nation: What We Can All Do to Save America's Future
Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer
Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
Source: The Visitor (2002)
Context: You asked for wisdom? Hear these words. Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.
“That which the fascists hate, above all else, is intelligence.”
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
“Nothing marks a man's character better than his attraction to intelligence.”
Terry Goodkind (1948) American novelist
“Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden…”
Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
Neal Shusterman book Unwind
Variant: Do I look feeble to you"
"Actually, yes."
"Well, looks can be deceiving. For instance, when I met you, I thought you look reasonably intelligent.
Source: Unwind
Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena
...in der ganzen Natur, mit dem Grad der Intelligenz die Fähigkeit zum Schmerze sich steigert, also ebenfalls erst hier ihre höchste Stufe erreicht.
The Wisdom of Life. Chapter II. Personality, or What a Man Is: Footnote 19
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Not yet placed by volume, chapter or section
“When liberty exceeds intelligence, it begets chaos, which begets dictatorship.”
Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer
Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Context: Brain, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think... In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
“Faith isn't an act of intelligence, it's an act of imagination.”
Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer
Source: Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
“Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence,” Will muttered.”
Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess
Variant: I am not a certified idiot—"
"Lack of certification hardly proves intelligence," Will muttered.
Source: Clockwork Princess
Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist
Source: The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History
Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy
Variant: and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere … and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Marguerite Yourcenar book Memoirs of Hadrian
Le véritable lieu de naissance est celui où l'on a porté pour la première fois un coup d'oeil intelligent sur soi-même: mes premières patries ont été des livres.
Source: Memoirs of Hadrian (1951), p. 33
“He was one of those people with lots of intelligence but no brains”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) American author
“Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer
"Sundays of a Bourgeois"
Source: Les dimanches d'un bourgeois de Paris, et autres aventures parisiennes
“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”
Benjamin Graham book The Intelligent Investor
Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 31
Context: Why could the typical investor expect any better success in trying to buy at low levels and sell at high levels than in trying to forecast what the market is going to do? Because if he does the former he acts only after the market has moved down into buying levels or up into selling levels. His role is not that of a prophet but of a businessman seizing clearly evident investment opportunities. He is not trying to be smarter than his fellow investors but simply trying to be less irrational than the mass of speculators who insist on buying after the market advances and selling after it goes down. If the market persists in behaving foolishly, all he seems to need is ordinary common sense in order to exploit its foolishness.
“Can all this just be an accident? Or could there be some alien intelligence behind it?”
Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath
Source: Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins
Richard J. Foster (1942) American Quaker theologian
Source: Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches
“The poem must resist the intelligence
Almost successfully.”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Source: The Collected Poems
“To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.”
Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist
"Conservation" (c. 1938); Published in Round River, Luna B. Leopold (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1966, p. 146-147.
1930s
Source: A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River
Context: The outstanding scientific discovery of the twentieth century is not television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciation how little we know about it. The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
