Motivational Quotes

Intelligence and intellectuals

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

- Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

Intelligence and intellectuals Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Intelligence and intellectuals

Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Weil, Simone

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

Dworkin, Andrea

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere.

Lewis, Wyndham

Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey.

Proust, Marcel

It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew.

Goldsmith, Oliver

10.

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

11.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

Colby, Frank Moore

12.

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

13.

How easy would life be if you were less intelligent!

Kocher, Gerhard

14.

People generally treat me like I'm very intelligent and really, I'm much less intelligent than she is. Scully is insanely intelligent.

Anderson, Gillian

15.

The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

Foucault, Michel

16.

People who are smart get into Mensa. People who are really smart look around and leave.

Randi, James

17.

Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own.

Keynes, John Maynard

18.

A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

The level of the development of a country is determined, in considerable part, by the level of development of its people's intelligence.

Machado, Luis Albert

20.

It is little that one gains by cleverness.

21.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

22.

You don't need intelligence to have luck, but you do need luck to have intelligence.

Proverb, Jewish

23.

The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.

Bogan, Louise

24.

If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.

Reade, W. Winwood

25.

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

Einstein, Albert

26.

She was short on intellect, but long on shape.

Ade, George

27.

It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence.

Lowell, James Russell

28.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

29.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

30.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

Hawking, Stephen

31.

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

Lec, Stanislaw J.

32.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

Einstein, Albert

33.

I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

Kundera, Milan

34.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Hellman, Lillian

35.

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

Eliot, George

36.

Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

37.

A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.

Matthews, Brander

38.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

39.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

Chomsky, Noam

40.

Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in a situation previously considered disordered.

Fatmi, Haneef

41.

The role of the intelligence --that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

Weil, Simone

42.

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.

Cavett, Dick

43.

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.

Auden, W. H.

44.

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.

Peter, Laurence J.

45.

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

Bono, Edward De

46.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Woolf, Virginia

47.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

48.

Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.

Short, Solomon

49.

Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.

Fasold, David

50.

I've never been an intellectual but I have this look.