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

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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

“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

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.”
― Isaac Asimov

“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

“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

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

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

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.”
― George R.R. Martin

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

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

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

“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

“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

“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
― Marie Curie

“Nothing whets the intelligence more than a passionate suspicion, nothing develops all the faculties of an immature mind more than a trail running away into the dark.”
― Stefan Zweig, The Burning Secret and other stories

“Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.”
― Victor Hugo

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