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Quotes about intelligence

113 quotes from 85 people

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No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The War of the Worlds (1898), Book One: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter IIn context
- Science
Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
H. G. Wells1866–1946The War of the Worlds (1898), Book One: The Coming of the Martians, Chapter IIn context
- Envy
The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900
There is no sin except stupidity.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 50e
Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 76e
- Advice
What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9: Philosophy (chapters 86–93 of the so called Big Typescript), p. 161
I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
Frank Zappa1940–1993The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 239
- Comedy