Intelligence Quotes

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.

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

F. Scott Fitzgerald

More Intelligence Quotes

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”

Carl Jung

“Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.”

Aldous Huxley

“Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined Often in a wooden house a golden room we find.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.”

John Steinbeck

“Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's intelligence without the guidance of another.”

Immanuel Kant

“Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.”

James Allen

“Human intelligence may not be the best trick nature has to offer.”

Bryant H. McGill

“Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.”

Steve Jobs

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

George Orwell

“If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.”

Lao Tzu

“Knowledge is love and light and vision.”

Helen Keller

“The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.”

John le Carre

“Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.”

Wayne Dyer

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