Virtues

"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."

"Clever men often have intellectual blind spots. And extremely clever men—perhaps those who are the cleverest of all—have the biggest blind spots when they depart from their areas of expertise."

"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."

"[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."

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

"Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on, Through words and things, a dim and perilous way."

"The intellectual power, through words and things, Went sounding on, a dim and perilous way!"

"Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence."

"It is impossible to feel pride in one’s intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it."

"The march of intellect."

"A man is not a wall, whose stones are crushed upon the road; or a pipe, whose fragments are thrown away at a street corner. The fragments of an intellect are always good."

"Glorious indeed is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. There lies the Land of Song; there lies the poet's native land."

"Works of the intellect are great only by comparison with each other."

"'Tis good-will makes intelligence."

"Hope is the poor man's bread."

"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

"Turn you to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope: even to day do I declare that I will render double unto thee; When I have bent Judah for me, filled the bow with Ephraim, and raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece, and made thee as the sword of a mighty man. And the Lord shall be seen over them, and his arrow shall go forth as the lightning: and the Lord God shall blow the trumpet, and shall go with whirlwinds of the south."

"Confiding, though confounded; hoping on, Untaught by trial, unconvinced by proof, And ever looking for the never-seen."

"Hope, like a cordial, innocent, though strong, Man's heart, at once, inspirits, and serenes, Nor makes him pay his wisdom for his joys."

"Hope of all passions, most befriends us here"

"Hope tells a flattering tale, Delusive, vain and hollow. Ah! let not hope prevail, Lest disappointment follow."

"Hopes; what are they?—Beads of morning Strung on slender blades of grass; Or a spider's web adorning In a straight and treacherous pass."

"Is Man A child of hope? Do generations press On generations, without progress made? Halts the individual, ere his hairs be gray, Perforce?"

"Hope told a flattering tale That joy would soon return; Ah, naught my sighs avail For love is doomed to mourn."

"As I said, such a possibility is a remote one, and I refuse to allow hope, that winged menace, to find purchase in my heart."

"Behind the cloud the starlight lurks, Through showers the sunbeams fall; For God, who loveth all his works, Has left his Hope with all."

"Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope."

"Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it."