“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.”
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.
“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.”
“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.”
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.”
“The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.”
“The Clinton White House today said they would start to give national security and intelligence briefings to George Bush. I don't know how well this is working out. Today after the first one Bush said, 'I've got one question: What color is the red phone?'”
“I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.”
“Newt Gingrich has a restless and outsized intelligence that is tragically unleavened by any kind of critical sensibility.”
“But it is equally incontrovertible that if our intelligence gathering process is seriously flawed, we had better find out and find out fast if we are to avoid another Sept. 11.”
“There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.”
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
“You can use all the quantitative data you can get, but you still have to distrust it and use your own intelligence and judgment.”
“The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.”
“An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.”
“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.”
“The role of the intelligence - that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.”
“To think is to practice brain chemistry.”