Quotes About Intelligence

We can begin to directly interact with the meanings that flow into us from the world every minute of every day of our lives. Those meanings are directly related to what is happening in the world around us, in the communication between plants, the intelligence of animals, the functioning of Gaia.

That we take plant words in through our nose or our skin or our eyes or our tongue instead of our ears does not make their language less subtle, or sophisticated, or less filled with meaning. As the soul of a human being can never be understood from its chemistry or grammar, so cannot plant purpose, intelligence, or soul. Plants are much more than the sum of their parts. And they have been talking to us a long time.

They are not disease organisms bent on our destruction. They are something else entirely, the foundation of all life on this planet. As Margulis makes plain, "Bacteria are not really individuals so much as part of a single global superorganism."13 And that superorganism is in actuality an incredibly large community of highly intelligent interactive subparts, just as our white blood cells are of us (or as we, as individuals, are of the human communities in which we live).

And, in fact, a crucial additional, and almost-always-overlooked, aspect of intelligence in living systems is that they possess the capacity to innovate behavior, that is, to generate unique solutions to the environmental challenges that face them. They have the ability, as the Latin root of the word indicates, to choose.

Our intelligence is only a special instance of a general condition.

Darwin had two genuinely deep insights that are paradigm altering: 1) that the root of the plant is in fact its brain; and 2) that the plant is using sensitive, and intelligent, analysis of it surroundings to navigate through the soil.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.

The widely disseminated picture of our human exceptionalism is grounded in the assertion that we possess a unique form of intelligence due to our unique, hypertrophic brain.

intelligence emerges as an aspect of self-organization in living systems. Always. What is actually true is that once self-organization occurs the capacity for analysis, innovation, and response all occur contemporaneously.

We have only to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

Among physicists, I'm respected I hope.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

The thing about smart people is that they seem like crazy people to dumb people.

Wind back the tape of life to the early days of the Burgess Shale; let it play again from an identical starting point, and the chance becomes vanishingly small that anything like human intelligence would grace the replay.

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot.

Contrary to current cynicism about past golden ages, the abstraction known as 'the intelligent layperson' does exist - in the form of millions of folks with a passionate commitment to continuous learning.

We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making.

This inner Being is all powerful, intelligent, indestructible and a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. This inner core is truly who and what you are and is perpetually trying to connect with your outward self.

Cosmic Ordering – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking your potential.