Mind

"No doubt, sulking populists in every era stay mean as weasels because they despise any form of superior intelligence except shrewdness."

"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."

"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

"I'll call "Society of Mind" this scheme in which each mind is made of many smaller processes. These we'll call agents. Each mental agent by itself can only do some simple thing that needs no mind at all. Yet when we join these agents in societies—in very special ways—this leads to true intelligence."

"All the branches of Christianity suffer by the fact that they seem to be unable to take in the greatest contribution of the modern world to ethical theory, to wit, the concept of a moral obligation to be intelligent."

"I once spoke to a human geneticist who declared that the notion of intelligence was quite meaningless, so I tried calling him unintelligent. He was annoyed, and it did not appease him when I went on to ask how he came to attach such a clear meaning to the notion of lack of intelligence. We never spoke again."

"I believe in "intelligence," and I believe also that there are inherited differences in intellectual ability, but I do not believe that intelligence is a simple scalar endowment that can be quantified by attaching a single figure to it—an I.Q. or the like."

"Though he had both esteem and admiration for the sensibility of the human race, he had little respect for their intelligence: man has always found it easier to sacrifice his life than to learn the multiplication table."

"When the best way to the Governor’s favour was to be intelligent, intelligence would become the fashion."

"The intellect has only one failing, which to be sure, is a very considerable one. It has no conscience. Napoleon is the readiest instance of this. If his heart had borne any proportion to his brain, he had been one of the greatest men of history."

"People who claim there is no such thing as native intelligence are nuts."

"Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it."

"The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so."

"The surest way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others."

"It is amazing how oppressive is the cleverness of some people, as if it were quite a duty in you to be clever too—"

"Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul?"

"Cleverness has often—in our world—only a posthumous good fortune. Clever people, who have nothing but their cleverness, may be remembered as superior, but they weren't allowed to feel it at the time. Stupid people can say the most devastating things!"

"An ounce of prudence is worth a pound of cleverness."

"Keen intelligence is two-edged, It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one's self. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law."

"Oh, I could tell you, but you're far too clever to listen. That said, we're never too old to be students of our own behaviors, Jean-Luc."

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

"Ultimately, it would certainly be desirable to have an algorithm for the selection of an intelligence, such that any trained researcher could determine whether a candidate's intelligence met the appropriate criteria. At present, however, it must be admitted that the selection (or rejection) of a candidate's intelligence is reminiscent more of an artistic judgment than of a scientific assessment."

"The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

"We are just one of a number of species which inhabit this planet even if we are the most intelligent. But then other species have not created nuclear weapons, started wars where millions have been killed, or engaged in discrimination against the races of their sub-species, all of which humankind has done. So who is to say which one is the most “intelligent?”"

"We really seek intelligence not for the answers it may suggest to the problems of life, but because we believe it is life,—not for aid in making the will of God prevail, but because we believe it is the will of God. We love it, as we love virtue, for its own sake, and we believe it is only virtue’s other and more precise name."

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

"It is an article of passionate faith among 'politically correct' biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway."

"We've reached a truly remarkable situation: a grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists, and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorrent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. If I'm right, this means that high office in the greatest country in the world is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it—the intelligentsia—unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest."

"She had found the answer to her affliction—conformity! She had already learned to conceal her intelligence. So many of us break our hearts before we learn that."

"Perhaps, in spite of her brilliance, she’s too young to realize the hostility of the world toward intelligence."

"Government resting upon the will and universal suffrage of the people has no anchorage except in the people's intelligence."

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

"There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person."

"Your intelligence often bears the same relation to your heart as the library of a château does to its owner."

"There are maybe two or three thousand people in the world as smart as us, little sister. Most of them are making a living somewhere. Teaching, the poor bastards, or doing research. Precious few of them are actually in positions of power."

"She should be my counsellor, But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs Impulses from a deeper source than hers; And there are motions, in the mind of man, That she must look upon with awe."

"An intelligent man neither allows himself to be controlled nor attempts to control others; he wishes reason alone to rule, and that always."

"Some recent philosophers seem to have given their moral approval to these deplorable verdicts that affirm that the intelligence of an individual is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be augmented. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism; we will try to demonstrate that it is founded on nothing."

"Comprehension, inventiveness, direction, and criticism: intelligence is contained in these four words."

"[T]he only species on earth which prides itself on its intelligence is the only one with the intelligence necessary, and possibly sufficient, to render itself extinct tomorrow."

"You don't realize that you're intelligent until it gets you into trouble."

"Man becomes man only by the intelligence, but he is man only by the heart."

"Because the insanity defense is a key part of our criminal-justice system, which is founded on the belief that people normally choose whether or not to obey the law. Certain people, we have said historically, cannot make that choice, however, either because they are too young or because of severe mental retardation or mental illness. The insanity defense exists in practically every civilized country. It is not some kind of aberration, as some seem to be suggesting in the wake of the Hinckley verdict."

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"

"Mad Hatter: You are trying to understand madness with logic. This is not unlike searching for darkness with a torch."

"Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? [...] Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity."

"The Royal College has taken a very dubious function of intervening into the inner affairs of national psychiatric associations and using mentally-ill patients for political purposes. I sincerely hope that none of the members… seriously believes that in the Soviet Union mentally-healthy people could be forcibly put into mental hospitals."

":Madness, then, varies and fluctuates: it cannot "re-word"—if the poet's observation be well founded; and though the Court would not at all rely upon it as an authority, yet it knows from the information of a most eminent physician that this test of madness, suggested by this passage, was found, by experiment in a recent case, to be strictly applicable, and discovered the lurking disease."

"::That I have uttered; bring me to the test, And I the matter will re-word; which madness Would gambol from.""