Quotes from Alfred Binet

Heredity, to our understanding is not capable of giving to this illness (paraphilia) its characteristic form ... Heredity invents nothing, creates nothing anew; it has no imagination.

A person may be a moron or an imbecile if he is lacking in judgment; but with good judgment he can never be either. Indeed the rest of the intellectual faculties seem of little importance in comparison with judgment.

Materialism is the metaphysics of those who refuse to be metaphysicians.

The intelligence of an individual in not a fixed quantity.

Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words.

The scale, properly speaking, does not permit the measure of the intelligence, because intellectual qualities are not superposable, and therefore cannot be measured as linear surfaces are measured.