Intelligence Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race. We cannot quite know what will happen if a machine exceeds our own intelligence, so we can't know if we'll be infinitely helped by it, or ignored by it and sidelined, or conceivably destroyed by it.

Stephen Hawking

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.

A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

Bertrand Russell

Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.

the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought.... We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Say, from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?

William Shakespeare

As elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency.

On chess

Raymond Chandler

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence—this may look like affectation—but it is my real opinion—it is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

The basis of all scientific work is the conviction that the world is an ordered and comprehensive entity, which is a religious sentiment. My religious feeling is a humble amazement at the order revealed in the small patch of reality to which our feeble intelligence is equal.

Albert Einstein

Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them. Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Intelligence is so damn rare and the people who have it often have such a bad time with it that they get bitter or propagandistic and then it's not much use.

Ernest Hemingway

It has been well said that 'the arch-flatterer with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a man's self.'

As St. Paul points out, Christ never meant that we were to remain children in intelligence: on the contrary, He told us to be not only "as harmless as doves," but also "as wise as serpents." He wants a child's heart, but a grown-up's head.

Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.

There are two kinds of beauty, one being of the soul and the other of the body, That of the soul is revealed through intelligence, modesty, right conduct, Generosity and good breeding, all of which qualities may exist in an ugly man; And when one's gaze is fixed upon beauty of this sort and not upon that of the body, Love is usually born suddenly and violently.

Miguel de Cervantes

Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible

That's what I meant,' said Pippin. 'We hobbits ought to stick together, and we will. I shall go, unless they chain me up. There must be someone with intelligence in the party.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Within a few years a simple and inexpensive device, readily carried about, will enable one to receive on land or sea the principal news, to hear a speech, a lecture, a song or play of a musical instrument, conveyed from any other region of the globe. The invention will also meet the crying need for cheap transmission to great distances, more especially over the oceans. The small working capacity of the cables and the excessive cost of messages are now fatal impediments in the dissemination of intelligence which can only be removed by transmission without wires.

What a man is: that is to say, personality, in the widest sense of the word; under which are included health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence, and education.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I know there are some who reject any gun safety measures. But the fact is that our intelligence and law enforcement agencies - no matter how effective they are - cannot identify every would-be mass shooter, whether that individual is motivated by ISIL or some other hateful ideology. What we can do - and must do - is make it harder for them to kill.

Modern intelligence won't accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.

G. K. Chesterton

I think we ought to impress on both our girls and boys that successful marriages require just as much work, just as much intelligence and just as much unselfish devotion, as they give to any position they undertake to fill on a paid basis.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Intelligence and character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce something valuable for the community.

Albert Einstein

There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence transform a yellow spot into a sun.

My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.