Quotes About Intelligence

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot

I have a theory that too much learning unbalances the mind.

Our minds have no real or absolute boundaries; on the contrary, we are part of an infinite field of intelligence that extends beyond space and time into realities we have yet to comprehend. The beyul and their dakini emissaries are traces of the original world, inviting us to open to the abiding mystery at the heart of all experience, the inseparability that infuses every action, thought, and intention.

Le Cardinal's conclusion suprised him. L'Arche produced a collective intelligence that was greater than the sum of its parts; interaction between the able and the disabled produced points of view that were more sophisticated than either group reported on its own.

The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.

Politics doesn't require talent, intelligence, or good looks. Truly, someone like Donald Rumsfeld, a mediocre government functionary with no discernible talent, intelligence, or charm, is a greater international celebrity than Mick Jagger. Rumsfeld, despite being a has-been, is known in every corner of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for his insanity and arrogance, while Jagger is admired by a mere couple hundred million music enthusiasts, huddled mostly in the First World.

The room of the modern man is stark, but in its simplicity exudes wealth and sophistication. There is just a bed or futon and an iPad. None of the old-time accoutrements which signified intelligence, artistic interest, or a curiosity about the world are evident.

My mother was a terrific force in my life. Wartime-generation woman, hadn't gone to university but should have done. Was very funny, very verbal, very clever, very witty.

Thus, they were asking: do higher intelligence test scores from about age 20 predict better educational outcomes, higher social position, and arguably more pro-social behaviours in the thirties? The answer was: they did. They then asked if this was due to (confounded by) parental socio-economic status; it mostly wasn't.

Genetic variants related to intelligence appear, therefore, to be associated with health.

Because someone else will mention it to you anyway, I will list Stephen Jay Gould 's book ( The Mismeasure of Man ). It gets the psychometrics wrong, it is wrong on brain size and intelligence, and it is written with strong anti-IQ-testing bias.

Any AI smart enough to pass a Turing test is smart enough to know to fail it.

I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.

True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.

like we're hanging on your every brilliant deduction.

If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.

IQ is a statistical method for quantifying specific kinds of problem-solving ability, mathematically convenient but not necessarily corresponding to a real attribute of the human brain, and not necessarily representing whatever it is that we mean by 'intelligence'.

Why resort to welfare cuts when you could aim more accurately at what you claim to be the real problem: intelligence itself? Why not improve education? Indeed, why aim your policy at increasing intelligence at all? There are many other desirable human traits. Why not reduce gullibility, aggressiveness, or greed?

so long since my last stint in college, but my aptitude for academics came back to me quickly.

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.

The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying. It was: 'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.

What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.

If you want to nourish your stupidity, try a little avarice.