Quotes on Intelligence

The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.

Everything great and intelligent is in the minority

If education is always to be conceived along the same antiquated lines of a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of man's future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual's total development lags behind?

To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.

Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many masters of craftsmanship. Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved.

I do not believe that every person, in every walk of life, can succeed in spite of any handicap. That would be perfection. But I do believe that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us (no matter how slowly) the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps the greatness of tomorrow.

Academic disciplines are subject to being overtaken by attacks of "knowingness"- a state of mind and soul that prevents shudders of awe and makes one immune to enthusiasm.

The mind does not take its complexion from the skin.

Let such teach others who themselves excel, And censure freely who have written well.

Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind.

One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs.

In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely varying the manufacture.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Srebrenica's not simply another reminder of man's inhumanity to man, but how intelligent people can always come up with intelligent reasons to do nothing.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Those who are held Wise among men and who search the reasons of things, are those who bring the most sorrow on themselves.