Quotes about intelligence and intellectuals

"Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."

Fromm, Erich on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it."

Garafola, Frank M. on intelligence and intellectuals
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"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon."

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von on intelligence and intellectuals   

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew."

Goldsmith, Oliver on intelligence and intellectuals   

"He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral."

Guin, Ursula K. Le on intelligence and intellectuals   

"There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side."

Havel, Vaclav on intelligence and intellectuals   

"It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value."

Hawking, Stephen on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America."

Hellman, Lillian on intelligence and intellectuals   

"A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso."

Herbert, A. P. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have."

Herold, Don on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible."

Hope, Anthony on intelligence and intellectuals   

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"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, But quickly to see how to make them good."

Hubbard, Elbert on intelligence and intellectuals
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"Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs."

Huxley, Aldous on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the higher life."

Huxley, Aldous on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Nothing mattered except states of mind, chiefly our own."

Keynes, John Maynard on intelligence and intellectuals   

"I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches."

Kundera, Milan on intelligence and intellectuals   

"It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves."

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De on intelligence and intellectuals
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"My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle."

Lawrence, D. H. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier."

Lec, Stanislaw J. on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Whenever the cause of the people is entrusted to professors, it is lost."

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich on intelligence and intellectuals   

"A sort of war of revenge on the intellect is what, for some reason, thrives in the contemporary social atmosphere."

Lewis, Wyndham on intelligence and intellectuals   

"It is not the insurrections of ignorance that are dangerous, but the revolts of the intelligence."

Lowell, James Russell on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The level of the development of a country is determined, in considerable part, by the level of development of its people's intelligence."

Machado, Luis Albert on intelligence and intellectuals   

"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."

Machiavelli, Niccolo on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control emotions by the application of reason."

Mannes, Marya on intelligence and intellectuals   

"On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects."

Marx, Karl on intelligence and intellectuals   

"A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence."

Matthews, Brander on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time."

Orwell, George on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure."

Peter, Laurence J. on intelligence and intellectuals
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"The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left."

Pound, Ezra on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand."

Pound, Ezra on intelligence and intellectuals   

"Our intellect is not the most subtle, the most powerful, the most appropriate, instrument for revealing the truth. It is life that, little by little, example by example, permits us to see that what is most important to our heart, or to our mind, is learned not by reasoning but through other agencies. Then it is that the intellect, observing their superiority, abdicates its control to them upon reasoned grounds and agrees to become their collaborator and lackey."

Proust, Marcel on intelligence and intellectuals   

"It's good to be clever, but not to show it."

Proverb, French on intelligence and intellectuals
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"You don't need intelligence to have luck, but you do need luck to have intelligence."

Proverb, Jewish on intelligence and intellectuals   

"People who are smart get into Mensa. People who are really smart look around and leave."

Randi, James on intelligence and intellectuals   

"If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed."

Reade, W. Winwood on intelligence and intellectuals   

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt."

Russell, Bertrand on intelligence and intellectuals   

"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."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on intelligence and intellectuals
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"The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on intelligence and intellectuals