Quotes About Intelligence

One of the features of the Enigma machine was its inability to encipher a letter as itself, which was a consequence of the reflector. The letter a could never be enciphered as A, the letter b could never be enciphered as B, and so on.

The best and most effective espionage service in the world belongs to the Vatican.

our brains—if we, that is, for our brains are the permanent essence of us—no longer have need of knowledge, and if we have no need because the computers do it all for us, then what is human intelligence good for? An existential intellectual crisis looms: If machines will acquire all our knowledge for us and do our thinking for us, then what, pray, is the need for us to be?

Scriassine studied me in turn. You're not so dumb, you know. Generally I dislike intelligent women, maybe because they're not intelligent enough. They always want to prove to themselves, and to everyone else, how terribly smart they are. So all they do is talk and never understand anything. What struck me the first time I saw you was that way you have of keeping quiet.

Sin embargo, le pregunté si me encontraba inteligente. Sí, ciertamente, pero la inteligencia no es una facultad separada; cuando doy vueltas en mis obsesiones mi inteligencia ya no está disponible.

Je suis un intellectuel. Ça m'agace qu'on fasse de ce mot une insulte : les gens ont l'air de croire que le vide de leur cerveau leur meuble les couilles.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

It is incontestable that the void which we grasp with the pincers of contradiction is from on high, for we grasp it the better the more we sharpen our natural faculties of intelligence, will and love. The void which is from below is that into which we fall when we allow our natural faculties to become atrophied.

We should not seize upon these mysteries as truths, for that is impossible, but recognize the subordination to these mysteries which we love of all that we seize upon as truths. The intelligence can recognize this subordination by feeling that the love of these mysteries is the source of conceptions which it can seize upon as truths. Such should be the relationship between faith and love.

L'intelligence n'a rien à trouver, elle a à déblayer. Elle n'est bonne qu'aux tâches serviles.

The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.

The mysteries of the faith are not an object for the intelligence as the faculty which permits affirmation or denial. They are not of the order of the truth, but above it. The only part of the human soul capable of real contact with them is the faculty of supernatural love. Therefore, it alone is capable of adherence to them.

we have to fix our will on the void—to will the void. For the good which we can neither picture nor define is a void for us. But this void is fuller than all fullnesses. If we get as far as this we shall come through all right, for God fills the void. It has nothing to do with an intellectual process in the present-day sense. The intelligence has nothing to discover, it has only to clear the ground. It is only good for servile tasks.

La foi, c'est l'expérience que l'intelligence est éclairée par l'amour

Reek took not more than an hour to relate what would've taken the most intelligent man five or six hours--that is, five minutes of speech and the rest of the five hours to recover from the nausea caused by having to utter such shameless rot...

She knows all about lite'ature except maybe how to read. .

She was a woman with a working brain and no work.

The Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated.

There are no fools so troublesome as those of the mind

Take a pinch of snuff, doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example.

In solving a problem of this sort, the grand thing is to be able to reason backwards. That is a very useful accomplishment, and a very easy one, but people do not practice it much.

Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.

A fool's wild speech confounds the wise.

Agents she'd named Brylcreem and Cancer Man