Quotes About Intelligence

What was amazing was that a large team of highly intelligent programmers could labor so hard and so long on such an unpromising project. You know, you shouldn't trust us intelligent programmers. We can think up such good arguments for convincing ourselves and each other of the utterly absurd. Especially don't believe us when we promise to repeat an earlier success, only bigger and better next time.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

Better a brain than a fist. A brain can hold anything, from giant things, like distant stars and planets, to tiny things we can't see, like germs. A brain can even hold things that aren't and never were, like hobbits. A brain can hold the whole universe, a fist just holds what little it can grab. Or hits what it can't.

What you guys don't understand about women is a lot. Smart women, they get bored easy. This one here, she's so much better than the rest, she has to manufacture her own challenge. If she didn't come from behind, she'd fall asleep on her own goddamn feet." Greeney

It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past—our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence.

An intelligent man will make his adaptation to the world through his intelligence, and not in the manner of a sixth-rate pugilist, even though now and then, in a fit of rage, he may make use of his fists. In the struggle for existence and adaptation everyone instinctively uses his most developed function, which thus becomes the criterion of his habitual reactions.

It was far from stupid, and therefore dangerously persuasive.

The interpretation of dreams and symbols demands intelligence. It cannot be turned into a mechanical system and then crammed into unimaginative brains. It demands both an increasing knowledge of the dreamer's individuality and an increasing self-awareness on the part of the interpreter

No experienced worker in this field will deny that there are rules of thumb that can prove helpful, but they must be applied with prudence and intelligence. One may follow all the right rules and yet get bogged down in the most appalling nonsense, simply by overlooking a seemingly unimportant detail that a better intelligence would not have missed. Even a man of high intellect can go badly astray for lack of intuition or feeling.

He was an extremely intelligent and perceptive man, and consequently doomed to a life of emotional and intellectual loneliness.

I get an extra 20 IQ points from being in that office,

In other words, those with the oracular ability to work with and tease valuable results out of increasingly complex machines will thrive.

Let's pull together the threads spun so far: Current economic thinking, as I've surveyed, argues that the unprecedented growth and impact of technology are creating a massive restructuring of our economy. In this new economy, three groups will have a particular advantage: those who can work well and creatively with intelligent machines, those who are the best at what they do, and those with access to capital.

The key question will be: are you good at working with intelligent machines or not?

Here, again, as I conceive, gentlemen forget that this government is a republican one, resting exclusively in the intelligence and virtue of the People.

It is hard to see how a great man can be an atheist. Without the sustaining influence of faith in a divine power we could have little faith in ourselves. We need to feel that behind us is intelligence and love. Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create. Faith is the great motive power, and no man realizes his full possibilities unless he has the deep conviction that life is eternally important, and that his work, well done, is a part of an unending plan.

The world is full of educated derelicts

He may be good-looking, but he's got no more sense than a pailful of earthworms.

Humans do seem to be the most intelligent species on Earth, but this wasn't inevitable. Things could easily have turned out otherwise. If the chimplike ancestors of humans had not moved out of the forest and into the savanna, the whole course of human evolution might not have happened. If our early ancestors had been unable to adapt to their new environment, then chimpanzees might be the most intelligent animals on Earth without being much different than they are today.

Grandfather had a saying: If you know a lot, know enough to make people respect you. If you are stupid, be stupid enough so they can pity you.

For their size, crows are among the brainiest organisms on Earth, outclassing not only other birds (with the possible exception of parrots), but also most mammals.

She is certain[ly] very clever, in a doubtful sense of the word.

The ordinary traveler, who never goes off the beaten route and who on this beaten route is carried by others, without himself doing anything or risking anything, does not need to show much more initiative and intelligence than an express package," Roosevelt sneered.

Nobody said he was Alvin Einstein.