Intelligence Quotes
Emerson leads this page, followed by Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Isaac D’Israeli, the American humorist Josh Billings and Simone Weil. For sourced lines there is Disraeli, in Contarini Fleming (1832), saying patience is a necessary ingredient of genius, and Emerson in English Traits (1856), remarking that the hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
Three popular lines carry flags. “Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent” is credited to Einstein and marked misattributed. A line about the centuries rarely producing a genius, credited to David Lloyd George, is also marked misattributed. William Feather’s remark that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person is disputed.
Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.
Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.
Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.
Genius is another word for magic, and the whole point of magic is that it is inexplicable.
Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.
Intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant.
Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.