Intelligent famous quotes
05-25-2025
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As long as the Almighty permitted intelligent men, created in his image and likeness, to fight in public and kill each other while the world looks on approvingly, it's not for me to deprive the chickens of the same privilege.
-- Abraham Lincoln -
The intelligent person is not one who merely knows what is good and what is bad. The intelligent person is one who, when he sees what is good, follows it, and when he sees evil, shuns it.
-- Abu Nu`aym -
I want to work with intelligent people and look for scripts that I think are intelligent and surprising.
-- Adam Brody -
So how can a poet-an intelligent, serious poet-write mystical verse now? The poetry of Adam Zagajewski provides the beginning of an answer to this question.
-- Adam Kirsch -
As a pop star, you don't have to be that smart for people to think you're intelligent.
-- Adam Levine -
I'm intelligent enough to survive happily and be compassionate. If I were too smart, I would realize all the ills of the world.
-- Adam Levine -
And now, advice for beginning mystics. Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can. Remember that the act of writing is a tiny part of a bigger something. Defend the value of the spiritual experience and if somebody tells you it's an old fashioned notion, laugh loudly and serenely.
-- Adam Zagajewski -
Humans call animals 'dumb'... after they robbed their entire own precious world. They are intelligent beings in their own right, and thoroughly self-sufficient... if not molested by humans. Yet, after millennia of slavery by selfish/callous humans they're made to look dumb! The 'superior species' in their situations would, too, appear 'dumb'.
-- Adela Popescu -
All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
-- Adolf Hitler -
A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work.
-- Adolf Hitler -
It will be my earnest aim that The New York Times give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is permissible in good society, and give it as early if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other reliable medium; to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved; to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.
-- Adolph Ochs -
Don't try to make intelligent decisions when your brain is hyped
-- Aeschylus -
The more gifted by nature is a man, the more is deplorable the abuse that he does by using them to shameful ends. A swindler (or crook) of higher condition is more blameworthy than a vulgar scoundrel; an intelligent eveil-doer, having benefited from a higher education, represent a more saddening phenomenon ("phénomène", Fr.) than an unfortune illiterate fellow having commited an offence.
-- African Spir -
Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.
-- Akio Morita -
The world holds two classes of men - intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence.
-- Al-Maʿarri -
I discovered that the most dangerous mask is the one worn by intelligent people because they are clever at their disguise.
-- Ala Bashir -
We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.
-- Alain de Botton -
Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.
-- Alain de Botton -
Gaffe-focused journalism: revenge of intelligent people who know true evils are out there but lack the access/time to get to them.
-- Alain de Botton -
He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor.
-- Alain de Botton -
Why is it always the "intelligent" people who are socialists?
-- Alan Bennett -
Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary.
-- Alan Kay -
To endow clock time with numinous meaning [is] hardly a fit occupation for an intelligent person.
-- Alan McGlashan -
In attempting to construct such (artificially intelligent) machines we should not be irreverently usurping His (God's) power of creating souls, any more than we are in the procreation of children,†Turing had advised. “Rather we are, in either case, instruments of His will providing mansions for the souls that He creates.
-- Alan Turing -
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.
-- Alan Turing -
Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
-- Alan Watts -
Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
-- Alan Watts -
Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—-to the “conquest†of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.
-- Alan Watts -
The best audience is one that is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.
-- Alben W. Barkley -
Love is the kind of illness that does not spare the intelligent or the dull.
-- Albert Camus -
[Love] is the type of disease that spares neither the intelligent nor the idiotic.
-- Albert Camus -
Desire for approval and recognition is a healthy motive, but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more intelligent than a fellow being or fellow scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for the community.
-- Albert Einstein -
No breeder is above catering to intelligent praise of his dog.
-- Albert Payson Terhune -
The last word in ignorance is the man who says of an animal or plant, "What good is it?" If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. If the biota, in the course of aeons, has built something we like but do not understand, then who but a fool would discard seemingly useless parts? To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.
-- Aldo Leopold -
Cynical realism is the intelligent man's best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
-- Aldous Huxley -
They say he's an intelligent man, right? Speaks five languages! I've got a 15-year-old boy from the Ivory Coast who speaks five languages!
-- Alex Ferguson -
The largest factor in predicting group intelligence was the equality of conversational turn taking; groups where a few people dominated the conversation were less collectively intelligent than those with a more equal distribution of conversational turn taking.
-- Alex Pentland -
A few modern philosopher's assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism.... With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.
-- Alfred Binet -
Our purpose is to be able to measure the intellectual capacity of a child who is brought to us in order to know whether he is normal or retarded. ... We do not attempt to establish or prepare a prognosis and we leave unanswered the question of whether this retardation is curable, or even improveable. We shall limit ourselves to ascertaining the truth in regard to his present mental state.
-- Alfred Binet -
Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing.
-- Alfred Binet -
Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words.
-- Alfred Binet -
In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.
-- Alfred Russel Wallace -
Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely uninhabitable.
-- Alfred Russel Wallace -
I really don't mind what people assume about me. I really think that my brain is my private thing. I don't need the approval of people. I don't need people to think I'm intelligent. And I'm not that intelligent.
-- Alice Eve -
There can be no intelligent control of the lead danger in industry unless it is based on the principle of keeping the air clear from dust and fumes.
-- Alice Hamilton -
It was easy to present figures demonstrating the contrast between lead work in the United States under conditions of neglect and ignorance, and comparable work in England and Germany, under intelligent control.
-- Alice Hamilton -
I believe in the immortality of the soul because I cannot conceive of an intelligent First Cause creating human beings through long process of evolution in this world only to destroy them.
-- Alice Hegan Rice -
The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis. A physical symbol system has the necessary and sufficient means for general intelligent action.
-- Allen Newell -
When I was first introduced to the music of Jacques Brel, I was totally floored. I had never heard anything as intelligent or sexy or angry as his music.
-- Amanda McBroom -
If there were some recipe that would make all of our children really sane and civic-minded and hugely intelligent, I think we'd probably all do it. But I don't know that there is a recipe for creating that.
-- Amanda Peet -
Invention is arrived at by intelligent stumbling.
-- Amar Bose -
If you can be funny, it means you're intelligent. Your brain is working fast.
-- Amber Valletta -
I am not as intelligent as Aamir Khan . I am barely managing to be in front of the camera. There are many people who know marketing well and surely Aamir knows much more than I do.
-- Amitabh Bachchan -
I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.
-- Amory Lovins -
To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.
-- Amy Lowell -
I was intelligent enough to make up my own mind. I not only had freedom of choice, I had freedom of expression.
-- Amy Tan -
Art must not be intelligent; art is a jouisance, an enjoyment
-- Andre Derain -
When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.
-- Andre Gide -
For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.
-- Andre Maurois -
Text is linear; it is black and white; it doesn't zoom around the page in 3-D; it isn't intelligent by itself; in fact, in terms of immediate reaction it is quite boring. I can't imagine a single preliterate was ever wowed at the first sight of text, and yet text has been the basis of arguably the most fundamental intellectual transformation of the human species. It and its subforms, such as algebra, have made science education for all a plausible goal.
-- Andrea diSessa -
In a sane, civil, intelligent and moral society, you don't blame poor people for being poor.
-- Andrew Young -
We may be living at that moment, on the cusp, when we go from being a species that feels a kind of loneliness in the cosmos to actually one sometime in the not too distant future being able to confirm the existence of other intelligent life.
-- Ann Druyan -
It is not the intelligent woman v. the ignorant woman; nor the white woman v. the black, the brown, and the red, it is not even the cause of woman v. man. Nay, tis woman's strongest vindication for speaking that the world needs to hear her voice.
-- Anna Julia Cooper -
If God is watching us, as some believers suggest, as though we were a television show and God had a lot of free time, the deity would surely be bemused by how dumbed-down devotion has sometimes become in this so-called modern era. How might an omnipotent being with the long view of history respond to those who visit the traveling exhibit of a grilled-cheese sandwich , sold on eBay, that is said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary? It certainly argues against intelligent design , or at least intelligent design in humans .
-- Anna Quindlen -
I think space exploration is very important. I think there is very intelligent life on Mars. I believe that Martians are spying on us from the bottom of the ocean.
-- Annabella Sciorra -
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
-- Anthony Burgess -
If all our political and intellectual elite offers by way of a national culture is "pop music, gambling, fashionable clothes or television," then we can neither mount a convincing intellectual defense against our enemies, nor hope to integrate intelligent, inquiring, and unfulfilled Muslim youths young men principally, of course to our way of life.
-- Anthony Daniels -
They tend to be civil servants, often diplomats drawn from the Foreign Office, who may be very pleasant, intelligent people, but once they get inside the Palace they're riveted to the status quo and they lose track of public opinion in the real world.
-- Anthony Holden -
Steve Martin is one of the most intelligent, well-read human beings that I've ever come across. He is equally as funny off screen as he is on. But he also has a very intellectual side, and he's a really nice human being. We actually become good friends.
-- Anthony LaPaglia -
Intelligent men have no need to listen to much talk, but should attend only to that which is profitable and guided by God's will.
-- Anthony the Great -
If an intelligent, educated, and healthy man begins to complain of his lot and go down-hill, there is nothing for him to do but to go on down until he reaches the bottom--there is no hope for him. Where could my salvation come from? How can I save myself? I cannot drink, because it makes my head ache. I never could write bad poetry. I cannot pray for strength and see anything lofty in the languor of my soul. Laziness is laziness and weakness weakness. I can find no other names for them. I am lost, I am lost; there is no doubt of that.
-- Anton Chekhov -
Rather than being a luxury, emotions are a very intelligent way of driving an organism toward certain outcomes.
-- Antonio Damasio -
Leaving out appraisal also would render the biological description of the phenomena of emotion vulnerable to the caricature that emotions without an appraisal phase are meaningless events. It would be more difficult to see how beautiful and amazingly intelligent emotions can be, and how powerfully they can solve problems for us.
-- Antonio Damasio -
Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don't know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.
-- Arsene Wenger -
When you give success to stupid people, it makes them more stupid sometimes and not more intelligent.
-- Arsene Wenger -
It takes an intelligent ear to listen to Jazz.
-- Art Blakey -
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
Perhaps, as some wit remarked, the best proof that there is Intelligent Life in Outer Space is the fact it hasn't come here. Well, it can't hide forever - one day we will overhear it.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
A man of genius can hardly be sociable, for what dialogues could indeed be so intelligent and entertaining as his own monologues?
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
Phones with numerical keypads worked best for dialing phone calls. Incidentally, phone calls tend to be the primary function of a phone. 'Smartphones' completely ignore these basic facts, resulting in some of the least intelligent devices I've seen yet. Oh the irony.
-- Ashly Lorenzana -
The most intelligent hearers are those who enjoy most heartily the simplest preaching. It is not they who clamor for superlatively intellectual or aesthetic sermons. Daniel Webster used to complain of some of the preaching to which he listened. "In the house of God" he wanted to meditate "upon the simple varieties, and the undoubted facts of religion;" not upon mysteries and abstractions.
-- Austin Phelps -
At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
-- B. F. Skinner -
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
-- B. F. Skinner -
Breath is the vehicle of consciousness and so, by its slow measured observation and distribution, we learn to tug our attention away from external desires toward a judicious, intelligent awareness.
-- B.K.S. Iyengar -
The body has to be invaded by the intelligence; each part has to become intelligent.
-- B.K.S. Iyengar -
An intelligent and conscientious opposition is a part of loyalty to country.
-- Bainbridge Colby -
When you buy into any version of fear, it can become your experience because your molecules are intelligent and your energy responds to the predominant feeling in your being. The focus of your mind is exactly what gives the orders to create what you experience.
-- Barbara Marciniak -
I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)
-- Barbara Mertz -
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
James Russell offers a timely and compelling blueprint for a realistic transformation of America's energy consumption by refusing to fall victim to conventional thinking. Accessible?pragmatic even?Russell's proposals speak to goals on the immediate horizon and underscore the role that intelligent design can play now in America. On a longer horizon, his analysis points to a range of issues about land use, transportation, and coordination of public and private investments to which the design professions have an enormous contribution to make. Here design and policy find common ground.
-- Barry Bergdoll -
It is true that I was denied access to a facility at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, because I never got in. I can't tell you what was inside. We both know about the rumors concerning a captured UFO and crew members. I have never seen what I would call a UFO, but I have intelligent friends who have.
-- Barry Goldwater -
The most intelligent thing we can do is love, not reason.
-- Barry Lopez -
When we enter the landscape to learn something, we are obligated, I think, to pay attention rather than constantly to pose questions. To approach the land as we would a person, by opening an intelligent conversation. And to stay in one place, to make of that one, long observation a fully dilated experience. We will always be rewarded if we give the land credit for more than we imagine, and if we imagine it as being more complex even than language. In these ways we begin, I think, to find a home, to sense how to fit a place.
-- Barry Lopez -
It's the quintessential Greek sport: harmonious, competitive, agonizing, nautical, and above all, intelligent. It combines Odysseus's brains and brawn and love of the sea with the tactical precision of the Spartan pikeman.
-- Barry S. Strauss -
You know, I'm fairly intelligent, but I don't think my grades reflected that.
-- Barry Sanders
