Quotes About Intelligence

“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
― Walter Cronkite

“He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.”
― Alexander Hamilton

“When you know better you do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”
― Albert Einstein

“The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
― Albert Einstein

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.”
― Woodrow Wilson

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

“An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.”
― Albert Camus

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Complete Tales and Poems

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
― Nelson Mandela

“A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I make mistakes like the next man. In fact, being--forgive me--rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“belief is the death of intelligence.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Cosmic Trigger: Die letzten Geheimnisse der Illuminaten oder An den Grenzen des erweiterten Bewusstseins

“Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did?
Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty.
Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin.
Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.”
― Bill Watterson

“I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”
― Jim Morrison

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
― C.G. Jung

“All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Albert Camus

“Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“The intelligence of that creature known as a crowd is the square root of the number of people in it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Jingo

“I always appear smarter when I dress up in my giant nipple costume. I know this because I'll overhear people say things like, "At least he's not a complete boob.”
― Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me

“It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.”
― Andrew Jackson