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.
Of the three requisitions of genius, the first is soul, and the second, soul, and the third, soul.
Genius—the free and harmonious play of all the faculties of a human being.
The true characteristic of genius—without despising rules, it knows when and how to break them.
No communication or gift can exhaust genius or impoverish charity.
The proportion of genius to the vulgar is like one to a million.
Genius may be almost defined as the faculty of acquiring poverty.
Education may work wonders as well in warping the genius of individuals as in seconding it.
The gifts of genius are far greater than the givers themselves venture to suppose.