Intelligence

"One will abide, and will confess that another is nobler than he, that another is richer, more handsome, and even that he is more learned, but that another is richer in reason scarcely any will confess: Rare is he who will concede genius."

"Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same."

"I've always been amused by the contention that brain work is harder than manual labor. I've never known a man to leave a desk for a muck-stick if he could avoid it."

"My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen."

"Parrots mimic their owners. Their owners consider that a sign of intelligence."

"Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw -- I don't say she will but she can."

"Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence."

"It's important to be smart, but it's also important to be active with your intelligence. The more you sit around over-thinking things, the more trouble you get into."

"I am successful because of my brains and my guts, put together, and I don't need some fancy-ass degree from a bunch of sweater-vest-wearing pricks who haven't gotten laid since Bush Senior was president... Do you know who studies sociology? People who would rather observe life than live it."

"To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity. (pg.192-193, People, Land, and Community)"

"Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy."

"He was marked out by his relentless ability to find fault with others' mediocrity--suggesting that a certain type of intelligence may be at heart nothing more or less than a superior capacity for dissatisfaction."

"Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not."

"Passion often makes a madman of the cleverest man, and renders the greatest fools clever."

"Speaking of which, about assuming you had a condom—I just meant that you, with your experience, would be prepared for responsible sex, even if it were on the fly. An intelligent man is prepared for spontaneity."

"A positive needs a negative to complete its cycle, as the Moon needs an embodiment of itself, the Sun, to complete the cycle of its illusory essence, the Earth. Now if the earth is in dire straits, is bombing the moon to discover whether water is ‘perceived’ in the natural stance of humans an intelligent move?"

"HALE, with a tasty love of intellectual pursuit"

"Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence."

"Since the dawn of time, women have been attracted to mates with strong survival skills—like intelligence and physical prowess—because men with these qualities are more likely to bring home dinner at the end of the day.” He stuck his thumbs in the air and grinned. “Dinner equals survival, team."

"Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason."