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Quotes about intelligence

113 quotes from 85 people

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Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching, Ch. 33, tr. Stephen Mitchell (1988)
- Power
- Wisdom
It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful.
Anton LaVey1930–1997The Nine Satanic Sins (1987)
- Comedy
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
Doris Lessing1919–2013The Golden Notebook (1962), Paul Tanner, in “Free Women: 1”
- Truth & Lies
Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Abolition of Man (1943), Ch. I: “Men without Chests”
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 is excellent, the second good, and the third useless.
Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527
The most ignorant are the most conceited.
Horace Mann1796–1859Lectures on Education (1855), Lecture 6
- Pride
Ignorance and confidence are constant companions.
John McAfee1945–2021Into the Heart of Truth (2001)
- Knowledge
Stupidity is much the same all the world over.
John Stuart Mill1806–1873The Subjection of Women (1869), Ch. 1
“I have been Foolish and Deluded,” said he, “and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.”
A. A. Milne1882–1956Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), Chapter IIIIn context
- Comedy
Repression by brute force is always a confession of the inability to make use of the better weapons of the intellect — better because they alone give promise of final success.
Ludwig von Mises1881–1973Liberalism (1927), Ch. 1: The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 10: The Argument of Fascism
- Power
A learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant one.
Molière1622–1673Les Femmes Savantes (1672), Act IV, sc. iii
- Education
It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.
George Orwell1903–1950Letter to Richard Rees (3 March 1949), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Vol. 4: In front of your nose, 1945-1950 (1968), ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus, p. 478
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell1903–1950Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
- Age
- Wisdom
An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990Entry for September 24; as quoted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, , p. 78
- Decisions