Quotes About Intelligence

When a cat greets you, he makes a big operation of it, bumping, stropping your legs, buzzing like mischief. But when he leaves, he just walks off and never looks back. Cats are smart.

An apostate scientist, a kidnapped scientist, a dull peasant, a two-headed monster, an apple-brained moron -- five knives, counting Joe-Jim as one; five brains, counting Joe-Jim as two and Bobo as none -- five brains and five knives to overthrow an entire culture.

One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands, 'What's in it for me?

intelligence" in the military meaning; a man in a suit can be just as stupid as anybody else—only he had better not be)

If God meant for people to fly, He would have given them brains.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." "There's

Any human organization can be rendered useless, impotent, a danger to itself, by selectively removing its best minds while carefully leaving the stupid ones in place.

Major Reid smiled cynically. "I have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius . . . but that was the age of the 'divine right of the common man.' Never mind, they paid for their folly.

I remembered hearing Dad say: "Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none. Pfah!

Hit anything hard enough, strike sparks. Elementary physics, known to everybody but intelligentsia

The unconscious is a marvelous universe of unseen energies, forces, forms of intelligence—even distinct personalities—that live within us. It is a much larger realm than most of us realize, one that has a complete life of its own running parallel to the ordinary life we live day to day. The unconscious is the secret source of much of our thought, feeling, and behavior. It influences us in ways that are all the more powerful because unsuspected.

help conquer the IQ shortage worry less and think more

In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.

Here's what it is, here's what it isn't, now here's why you need to go tell everyone how smart I am.

I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.) - Robert Anton Wilson

REALITY-LABYRINTH: existence regarded as a multiple-choice intelligence test; the sum total of reality-tunnels available to an open-minded or non-Fundamentalistic human at a given time and place.

The more omnipresent the secret police, the more likely it is that intelligent men and women will regard the government with fear and loathing. The government, on discovering that growing numbers of citizens regard it with fear and loathing, will increase the size and powers of the secret police, to protect itself. The infinite regress again appears.

A note to confirmed pessimists: Prigogine's analysis is based on probability-theory and, hence, is not certain. Thus, if you have found these lyrical pages unduly alarming, take comfort in the thought that, although human success is highly probable, there is still a small chance that we can blow ourselves up or that your favorite apocalyptic scenarios might still occur, despite the general trend toward higher coherence and higher intelligence.

Why do we say "dumb" (mute) for stupid? Because "a good mind means a good mouth," and the human mind is a verbalizing circuit.

4) Prigogine's math indicates that the odds actually favor the optimists, since dissipative structures are more likely to evolve into more information-rich (intelligent?) forms than into more primitive or chaotic forms.

And I think it's very stupid behavior, too, because conspiracies decrease human intelligence which is the function of precise and open communication. But I do think conspiracy is a factor. There is a lot of contemporary history that cannot be understood unless you assume a multitude of conspiracies, all somewhat stupid at times.

We need to realize that the same technology, wisely used by intelligent men and women, can free us from every form of neurotic and irrational rigidity, to dial and focus our nervous systems as easily as we dial or focus our TV, turning any channel or circuit off and on as we choose. This is what metaprogramming (cybernetic) consciousness means.

A civilization based on authority-and-submission is a civilization without the means of self-correction. Effective communication flows only one way: From master-group to servile-group. Any cyberneticist knows that such a one-way communication channel lacks feedback and cannot behave intelligently.

In brief, Intelligence Intensification means intelligence-studying-intelligence (I2), and the first thing discovered by intelligence-studying-intelligence (the brain studying the brain: metaprogramming) is that the more types of intelligence you have, the more fun it is to try to develop even more subtle, sensitive, futique levels of awareness; higher intelligence still.