Quotes About Intelligence

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly. Sucks to be you, quadruped. Opposable thumbs - don't leave home without them.

And they can hold a sustained conversation, which indicates human levels of intelligence. Although, to be fair, I've met some bare stupid people who could have a conversation, so that might not prove anything.

I had found the upper limit of my courage. Fortunately for me, there is no known lower limit to human stupidity.

Never diss somebody's mum, never play chess with the Kurdish mafia, and never lie down with a woman who's more magical than you are. I

All the things laughed then, because there stood man—naked and bereft of all his gifts. All the things save the fox, who looked up at the man and saw long slim fingers unencumbered by claws, fingers that could grasp and take and reshape things to suit man's own purposes. And saw eyes alive with a dreadful intelligence unencumbered by wisdom. And fox was suddenly afraid.

We decided to go back to basics and put the frighteners on some snouts." "Really?" "We adopted a proactive intelligence-gathering policy utilising appropriate stakeholders in the community and pre-established covert human intelligence sources. "And nobody can put a frightener on a covert human quite like Lesley can.

This is where the whole ape-descended thing reveals its worth, I thought madly, sucks to be you, quadruped.

We try to teach our students how to think... how to use their brains and imagination. Individual subjects can always be learned by a man who knows how to learn. We teach them to think, and the other subjects arise by themselves...

God has given us more than fourteen billion cells and connections in our brain. Why would God give us such a complex organ system unless he expects us to use it?

It's a curse to have a mind if it is illegal to use it. It's a curse to have intelligence if you are forced to cloak it in a lifetime of wilful stupidity.

Some people are weatherwise, and most are otherwise.

The learned Fool writes his Nonsense in better Language than the unlearned; but still 'tis Nonsense.

Talking and eloquence are not the same to speak and to speak well are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.

To speak and to speak well, are two things. A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.

Out of a hundred birds of the same stock perhaps one will be that bird all breeders hope for—a bird of highly individual character, courageous and resourceful. Much depends on the individual bird and especially its character and intelligence.

Soviet intelligence was playing a long game, laying down seed corn that could be harvested many years hence or left dormant forever. It was a simple, brilliant, durable strategy of the sort that only a state committed to permanent world revolution could have initiated. It would prove staggeringly successful.

And so began a bizarre situation in which Philby told Moscow the truth and was disbelieved because the truth contradicted Moscow's expectations.

The Double Cross system was now not only self-financing but profitable, to Masterman's delight: "The actual cash supplied by the Germans to maintain their and our system between 1940 and 1945 was something in the region of £85,000"—the equivalent of more than £4.5 million today.

For an intelligence service, there is no process more painful and debilitating than an internal hunt for an unidentified traitor. The damage Philby did to MI6's self-confidence was far greater and more enduring than anything he inflicted by spying for the KGB. A mole does not just foment mistrust. Like a heretic, he undermines the coherence of faith itself.

Has the Prime Minister made up his mind to cover up at all costs the dubious third man activities of Mr Harold Philby who was first secretary at the Washington embassy a little time ago, and is he determined to stifle all discussions on the very great matters which were evaded in the White Paper, which is an insult to the intelligence of the country?

Vivian was not alone in thinking that a man who spent so much time discussing table tennis was probably a spy.

The greatest writers of spy fiction have, in almost every case, worked in intelligence before turning to writing. W. Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carré: all had experienced the world of espionage firsthand. For the task of the spy is not so very different from that of the novelist: to create an imaginary, credible world and then lure others into it by words and artifice.

Far from being repelled by the duplicity around him, Elliott felt ever more drawn to the game of skulduggery and double cross. The Venlo debacle had been "as disastrous as it was shameful," but he also found it fascinating, an object lesson in how highly intelligent people could be duped if persuaded to believe what they most wanted to believe. He was learning quickly.