Selected intelligence quotes

1. I am quite sure that very few of the so-called Reds in Spain were really Communists. We were badly deceived, for, had I known the real state of affairs, I would never have allowed our aircraft to bombard and destroy a starving population and at the same time re-establish the Spanish clergy in all their horrible privileges. (10th February 1945)

2. It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.

3. Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

4. Why does it so often take a genius to see the obvious?

5. By using your intelligence, you can sometimes make your problems twice as complicated.

6. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level.

7. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

8. I certainly think that when I flick through all the magazines at the hairdresser's I like to see and am drawn to images that have an intelligence and mind at work behind them.

9. Men don't get smarter when they grow older. They just lose their hair.

10. But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.

11. An unbending and absolute acceptance of any idea is a sure sign of a small mind, no matter the greatness of intellect possesed by the one accepting that idea.

12. The curse of the intelligent man is that he will always find himself surrounded by the ignorant. The measure of the intelligent man is determined by his tolerance toward them.

13. Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

14. 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.

15. Baseball is a game played by idiots for morons.

16. The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

17. Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.

18. Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

19. The IQ and the life expectancy of the average American recently passed each other in opposite directions.

20. Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

21. A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.

22. I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could - with 100 per cent certainty - know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

23. I hate people who think it's clever to take drugs... like custom officers.

24. Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

25. I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.

26. Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.

27. Football is a game played with arms, legs and shoulders but mostly from the neck up.

28. Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

29. Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius?

30. Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.

31. The definitions of humanism are many, but let us here take it to be the attitude of those men who think it an advantage to live in society, and, at that, in a complex and highly developed society, and who believe that man fulfills his nature and reaches his proper stature in this circumstance. The personal virtues which humanism cherishes are intelligence, amenity, and tolerance; the particular courage it asks for is that which is exercised in the support of these virtues. The qualities of intelligence which it chiefly prizes are modulation and flexibility.

32. The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot.

33. Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

34. The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

35. Oh, I'm not a true genius. I'm a near genius. I would say I'm a short genius. I'd rather be tall and normal than a short genius.

36. Fifteen referees. I want fifteen referees to be at this fight because there ain't no one man who can keep up with the pace I'm gonna set except me. There's not a man alive who can whup me. I'm too fast. I'm too smart. I'm too pretty. I should be a postage stamp. That's the only way I'll ever get licked.

37. Libby was advised by the vice president of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA in the counterproliferation division. Libby understood that the vice president had learned this information from the CIA.

38. Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.

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

40. Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch. But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit.

41. As I have said throughout, I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

42. Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet.

43. If we expel these spies, others will come in their place. Maybe bright ones will come and we'll beat ourselves up trying to find them. We'll think things over.

44. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points

45. Experienced military and intelligence professionals know that torture, in addition to being illegal and immoral, is an unreliable means of extracting information from prisoners. Much is being made of former CIA official John Kiriakou's statement that waterboarding 'broke' a high-value terrorist involved in the 9/11 plot. There are always those who, whether out of fear or inexperience, rush to push the panic button instead of relying on what we know works best and most reliably in these situations. I would caution those who would rely on this example. It is far from clear that the information obtained from this prisoner through illegal means could not have been obtained through lawful methods. The FBI was getting good intelligence from this prisoner before the CIA took over. And there are numerous examples of cases where relying on information obtained through torture has disastrous consequences. The reality is that use of torture produces inconsistent results that are an unreliable basis for action and policy. The overwhelming consensus of intelligence professionals is that torture produces unreliable information. And the overwhelming consensus of senior military leaders is that resort to torture is dishonorable. Use of such primitive methods actually puts our own troops and our nation at risk.

46. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language. #109

47. The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together

48. You have neither the patience that weaves long lines nor a feeling for the irregular, nor a sense of the fittest place for a thing ... For you intelligence is not one thing among many. You ... worship it as if it were an omnipotent beast ... a man intoxicated on it believes his own thoughts are legal decision, or facts themselves born of the crowd and time. He confuses his quick changes of heart with the imperceptible variation of real forms and enduring Beings .... You are in love with intelligence, until it frightens you. For your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresitible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.