Quotes on Intelligence

For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 'is involved' or not (whatever 'is involved' might mean).

The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

The thing to keep in mind is that we're still in the very early days when it comes to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Saying there's a silence is a bit like if Columbus, looking to discover a new continent, only sailed 10 miles off the coast of Spain before turning back to say, 'Nothing out there!'

Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.

Genius without education is like silver in the mine.

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Through all the years that I spent formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for “intelligent agreement” or at least for “intelligent disagreement.” I found neither. Today, I am not looking for “intelligent disagreement” any longer ... What I am looking for is intelligent agreement.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

He whose intellect overcomes his lust is higher than the angels; he whose lust overcomes his intelligence is less than an animal.

I do not - I never believed it's better to kill a terrorist than to detain him. We want to detain as many terrorists as possible so we can elicit the intelligence from them in the appropriate manner so that we can disrupt follow-on terrorist attacks.

Men almost universally have acknowledged providence, but that fact has had no force to destroy natural aversions and fears in the presence of events.

Diligence is a very great help even to a mediocre intelligence. -Diligentia maximum etiam mediocris ingeni subsidium

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Instead of assuming that emotional intelligence is always useful, we need to think more carefully about where and when it matters.