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.
One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.
Humans are chimpanzees reciting Shakespeare – dunces with the technology of geniuses.
When we sin, we think we are geniuses; when we confess, we know we are idiots.
The stupid and the children of genius alike emancipate themselves from conventions.
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?