Quotes About Intelligence

how extremely stupid not to have thought of that

È proprio vero che il Poeta, o il Filosofo, o l'Artista il cui genio è la gloria della sua epoca, viene ad essere diminuito per il fatto che senza dubbio è storicamente probabile, per non dire certo, che egli è il diretto discendente di qualche selvaggio nudo e bestiale, la cui intelligenza appena bastava a farlo un po' più furbo della volpe, e per ciò stesso molto più pericoloso della tigre?

Most millionaires, for example, are not intellectually gifted in an analytical sense. They did not receive all As in school, nor were they in the 1400-and-above SAT club. That's why they decided not to compete in macho dogfight environments where superior analytical intelligence is a requirement to succeed.

Their children will have it better. They will not have to take significant risks. They will become physicians, attorneys, and accountants. Their capital is their intellect.

Read Sternberg's Successful Intelligence.

And as for the human mind, I deny that it is the same in all men.  I hold that there is every variety of natural capacity from the idiot to Newton and Shakespeare; the mass of mankind, midway between these extremes, being blockheads of different degrees; education leaving them pretty nearly as it found them, with this single difference, that it gives a fixed direction to their stupidity, a sort of incurable wry neck to the thing they call their understanding. 

And this whole sunny region—these easily scaled coastal heights, these laughing rock-bound pools, and the sea itself, as far as the islands where boats sailed past now and then—was populated in all directions: people, children of the sea and sun, were stirring and resting everywhere, intelligent, cheerful, beautiful, young humanity, so fair to gaze upon. And at the sight, Hans Castorp's whole heart opened wide—painfully, lovingly wide.

Volgens mij is [sarcasme] het schitterendste wapen van de rede tegen de machten van de duisternis en de lelijkheid. Sarcasme, mijnheer, is de geest van de kritiek, en kritiek betekent de oorsprong van vooruitgang en verlichting.

Knowledge never hurts.

Ak?ll? olmak gerektiÄŸini düÅŸünerek tam öyle olmaya çal??t???m?z s?rada yine aptallaÅŸmak gerektiÄŸini öÄŸreniyoruz.

The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally beginning to be men. We do not have a high enough opinion of our own nature. We think we are at the gates of heaven and we are only just beginning to come into our own realm as free and intelligent beings.

Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God

They went into the desert not to study speculative truth, but to wrestle with practical evil; not to perfect their analytical intelligence, but to purify their hearts.

2. If, instead of trusting in God, I trust only in my own intelligence, my own strength, and my own prudence, the means that God has given to me to find my way to Him will all fail me. Nothing created is of any ultimate use without hope. To place your trust in visible things is to live in despair.

Behind the walls of his isolation, his intelligence and his will, unimpaired, and not hampered in any essential way by the partial obstruction of some of his senses, were turned to God, and communed with God Who was with him and in him, and Who gave him, as I believe, light to understand and to make use of his suffering for his own good, and to perfect his soul.

If it is awakened, it communicates a new life to the intelligence in which it lives, so that it becomes a living awareness of itself: and this awareness is not so much something that we ourselves have, as something that we are. It is a new and indefinable quality of our living being.

Wisdom and deep intelligence require an honest appreciation of mystery.

You need your intelligence and your skepticism.

The one ingredient missing in much of modern spirituality is intelligence. Yet, when you examine the religious traditions of the world you find study, study, and more study.

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't.

According to intelligence contacts of Sauncho's, it had been common CIA practice for a while to put Nixon's face on phony North Vietnamese bills, as part of a scheme to destabilize the enemy currency by airdropping millions of these fakes during routine bombing raids over the north. But Nixonizing U.S. currency this way was not as easily explained, nor sometimes even appreciated.

People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.