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.
To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school, is to put a race horse in a mill.
Stupid fools look just as good as military geniuses until the fighting starts.
The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.
A fool and his words are soon parted; a man of genius and his money.
Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
The most profitable and praiseworthy genius in the world is untiring industry.
A field of clay touched by the genius of man becomes a castle.
Character is the governing element in life, and is above genius.
Birth and wealth are conferred on some men as imperiously by nature, as genius, strength, or beauty.