Quotes about intelligence and intellectuals

"She was short on intellect, but long on shape."

Ade, George on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intelligence: I was asked tonight why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won t. 1. I am not an intellectual. Two minutes talk with Aldous Huxley, William Glock, or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat, drink, smoke, and relax. 4. I don't know very much, but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress, and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made."

Agate, James on intelligence and intellectuals   

"I've never been an intellectual but I have this look."

Allen, Woody on intelligence and intellectuals
6 fans of this quote   

"The intellect is weak; it has no power except over what is as weak as itself."

Al-Nuri on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness."

Amiel, Henri Frederic on intelligence and intellectuals   

"People generally treat me like I'm very intelligent and really, I'm much less intelligent than she is. Scully is insanely intelligent."

Anderson, Gillian on intelligence and intellectuals   

"To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife."

Auden, W. H. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave."

Bacon, Francis on intelligence and intellectuals   

"I've been called many things, but never an intellectual."

Bankhead, Tallulah on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie."

Bogan, Louise on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven."

Bono, Edward De on intelligence and intellectuals
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"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down."

Bradbury, Ray on intelligence and intellectuals
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"To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them."

Bronowski, Jacob on intelligence and intellectuals   

"To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is."

Cavett, Dick on intelligence and intellectuals   

"A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure."

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on intelligence and intellectuals
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"A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself."

Chomsky, Noam on intelligence and intellectuals   

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."

Clarke, Arthur C. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them."

Colby, Frank Moore on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not."

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle on intelligence and intellectuals
4 fans of this quote   

"The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true."

Cudworth, Ralph J. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us."

Cudworth, Ralph J. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intellectual sodomy, which comes from the refusal to be simple about plain matters, is as gross and abundant today as sexual perversion and they are nowise different from one another."

Dahlberg, Edward on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use."

Dworkin, Andrea on intelligence and intellectuals   

"We should take care not to make the intellect our god: it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality."

Einstein, Albert on intelligence and intellectuals
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"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

Einstein, Albert on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them."

Einstein, Albert on intelligence and intellectuals
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"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances."

Eliot, George on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals   

"If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"One definition of man is an intelligence served by organs."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"We lie in the lap of immense intelligence."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Ask a wise man to dinner and he'll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you'll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people's entertainment."

Erasmus, Desiderius on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."

Fasold, David on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in a situation previously considered disordered."

Fatmi, Haneef on intelligence and intellectuals   

"I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive."

Fisher, Carrie on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play)."

Foucault, Michel on intelligence and intellectuals