“Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.”
Intelligence comes in more flavors than IQ tests can measure. These quotes explore different kinds of smarts — emotional, creative, street, academic — and the humbling realization that the smartest people are usually the ones who know how much they do not know.
“In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.”
“Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.”
“It is conceded by all that man is the very highest type of all living creatures on the earth. His intelligence is far superior to that of any other earthly being.”
“When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks.'”
“Human folk are as a matter of fact eager to find intelligence in animals.”
“I apologize for being obvious, but every time I watch the curtain come down on even a halfway decent production of a Shakespeare play I feel a little sorrowful that I'll never know the man, or any man of such warm intelligence.”
“If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?”
“Where the stakes are the highest, in the war on terror, we cannot possibly succeed without extraordinary international cooperation. Effective international police actions require the highest degree of intelligence sharing, planning and collaborative enforcement.”
“Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.”
“The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.”
“Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”
“The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”
“I think there's a supreme power behind the whole thing, an intelligence. Look at all of the instincts of nature, both animals and plants, the very ingenious ways they survive. If you cut yourself, you don't have to think about it.”
“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
“The intelligence community gets hurt through sequestration.”
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”