Intelligence Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

If I knew that it was fated for me to be sick, I would even wish for it; for the foot also, if it had intelligence, would volunteer to get muddy.

There are many situations in life, and particularly in the commercial world, where a man cannot by any diligence inform himself of the degree of credit which ought to be given to the persons with whom he deals; in which cases he must apply to those whose sources of intelligence enable them to give that information. The law of prudence leads him to apply to them, and the law of morality ought to induce them to give the information required.

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon

I listened while he thought aloud and had almost forgotten my Machiavellian combination, so keen was my relish of the joyous intimacy of this communion with a mind I had passionately loved in his works. He was the first of the great writers of our day whom I had thus approached on something like terms of intimacy. As we talked I observed the strange similarity between his spoken and his written words. I admired the charming simplicity with which he abandoned himself to the pleasures of imagination, his superabundant intelligence, the liveliness of his impressions and his total absence of arrogance and of pose.

Our ideal is the statesman who knows and loves his country and who never makes the mistake of underestimating his employer, either in intelligence or strength.

Margery Allingham

Through ignorance, through faith, through intelligence, through trickery and cunning, through illumination, the reader rewrites the text with the same words of the original but under another heading, re-creating it, as it were, in the very act of bringing it into being.

Alberto Manguel

No man of any intelligence would pretend to know a female mind.

Character is of the first importance, but intelligence is nevertheless essential. Ii is desirable for a leader to have a broad education. History and poetry increase his knowledge of human passions. Culture offers the man of action opportunities now and then to capture his serenity; it puts at his disposal models of order and clarity. It is, in a sense, a work of art to reconstruct a country or to lead an army, and the man who has acquired a sense of beauty from his studies will be the more successful for it.

The assumption is that the right kind of society is an organic being not merely analogous to an organic being, but actually a living structure with appetites and digestions, instincts and passions, intelligence and reason.

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favoured by that fortune which loves the brave.

On the Spanish-American War of 1898

Simple as you like. Look at this with the goal. Lovely ball in, Toni Kroos takes his time. Look at this for the pass. Have some of that. Intelligence of Muller. Julio Cesar does well, but Klose is there for the rebound. What a beautiful goal, simple. Running off the ball, incisive passes. Brazil have to watch out; they've already been warned. They're going to go down by a lot more if they continue like this. But, a wonderful achievement by Miroslav Klose.

Steve McManaman

One can find meaning in poetry as well as in science in the contemplations of a flower as well as in the grasp of an equation. We can be filled with wonder as we stand under the majestic dome of the night sky and see the myriad lights that twinkle and shine in its seemingly infinite depths. We can also be filled wit awe as we behold the meaning of the formulae that define the propagation of light in space, the formation of galaxies, the synthesis of chemical elements, and the relation of energy, mass and velocity in the physical universe. The mystical perception of oneness and the religious intuition of a Divine intelligence are as much a construction of meaning as the postulation of the universal law of gravitation.

The aspects of society that humanism most exalts are justice and continuity. That is why humanism is always being presented with a contradiction. For when it speaks of justice it holds that the human condition is absolute; yet when it speaks of continuity it implies that society is not absolute but pragmatic and even anomalous. Its intelligence dictates the removal of all that is anomalous; yet its ideal of social continuity is validated by by its perception that the effort to destroy anomaly out of hand will probably bring new and even worse anomalies, the nature of man being what it is. "Let justice be done though the heavens fall" is balanced by awareness that after the heavens fall justice will not ever be done again.

Lionel Trilling

There is something else which needs to be looked at beyond the dimension of the body and mind. If that dimension is not experienced, once you have come in the human form, if you do not experience yourself beyond the limitations of this body and mind, I would say this human form has been wasted upon you. Because to eat, sleep, reproduce and die one day, you don't need this kind of a body, you don't need this kind of intelligence.

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The interior life must be filled with grace and charity, without dissimulation, of direct intention, rich in virtue, the memory exempt from cares and solicitude, freed and detatched, entirely delivered of every image; the heart set free, open and up lifted above the Heavens; the intelligence empty and stripped of all consideration but God.

John Ruysbroeck

It makes me happy to encounter goodness, love of work, humane intelligence, and people no matter at what kind of job, be it ever so humble, or ever so exalted, who do it well and con amore.

Bernard Berenson

We do not want dictators, we do not want oligarchic parties or class rule, we want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself. To work out a way to that world brain organization is therefore our primary need in this age of imperative construction.

Intelligence, guided by kindness, is the highest wisdom....

Robert G. Ingersoll

In nations composed of both cultured and uncultured elements, the uncultured will govern because it is their habit to attack and resolve doubts with their fists in cases where the cultured have failed in the art of governing. The uncultured masses are lazy and timid in the realm of intelligence, and they want to be governed well. But if the government hurts them, they shake it off and govern themselves.

Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, the manner in which information is coordinated and used.

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

I always started a job with the feeling that I'd soon quit or be fired, and this gave ma a relaxex manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.

Charles Bukowski

A work of art may be simple, though that is not necessary. There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

The too perfect security of the Upper-worlders had led them to a slow movement of degeneration, a general dwindling in size, strength, and intelligence.