114 Inspiring Intelligence Quotes

In a world driven by innovation and the pursuit of knowledge, intelligence is a quality that continues to evolve and inspire. From the deep thinkers of ancient philosophy to the trailblazers of modern science, intelligence has always been at the heart of human progress. This collection of 114 inspiring quotes seeks not only to celebrate the brilliance of the mind but also to stimulate reflection and personal growth. Each quote offers a unique perspective on what it means to be intelligent, encouraging readers to embrace their own potential and explore the limitless possibilities of the human intellect. Dive in and discover how these words of wisdom can ignite your passion and curiosity for learning.

1. “We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are.” - Stephen Jay Gould

2. “belief is the death of intelligence.” - Robert Anton Wilson

3. “My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.[Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19]” - Arthur C. Clarke

4. “Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.” - Horace Mann

5. “It is a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word.” - Andrew Jackson

6. “A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.” - Nelson Mandela

7. “It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.” - G.H. Hardy

8. “These are the times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues. When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character of the hero and the statesman.” - Abigail Adams

9. “Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection.” - Victor Hugo

10. “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.” - Walter Lippmann

11. “I think of myself as an intelligent, sensitive human being with the soul of a clown which always forces me to blow it at the most important moments.” - Jim Morrison

12. “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

13. “Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.” - Kevin Smith

14. “You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.” - Philip Roth

15. “Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.” - George Scialabba

16. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

17. “Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.” - Edgar Allan Poe

18. “The advancement of science and the diffusion of information [is] the best aliment to true liberty.” - James Madison

19. “We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.” - Louis-Ferdinand Celine

20. “He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.” - P.G. Wodehouse

21. “One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so—but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence, the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.” - Douglas Adams

22. “The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.” - Richard M. Nixon

23. “It's hard to decide who's truly brilliant; it's easier to see who's driven, which in the long run may be more important.” - Michael Crichton

24. “Eroticize intelligence.” - Douglas Coupland

25. “Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs.” - Zig Ziglar

26. “Intelligence, Kant reminds, is not so much a result of genius, rather it is a consequence of a determination to use it.” - Michael R. LeGault

27. “This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.” - P.G. Wodehouse

28. “A physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.” - Aldous Huxley

29. “Intelligence minus purpose equals stupidity.” - Toba Beta

30. “An intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true education than many another in a life of heroic vigils".” - Robert Louis Stevenson

31. “I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.” - Antonio Gramsci

32. “I didn't set out to discover a truth. I was actually sent to the Outer Fringes to conduct a chair census and learn some humility. But the truth inevitably found me, as important truths often do, like a lost thought in need of a mind.” - Jasper Fforde

33. “One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.” - George Bernard Shaw

34. “Make the doors upon a woman's wit,and it will out at the casement;shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole;stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.” - William Shakespeare

35. “[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time. ” - George Bernard Shaw

36. “I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” - Lev Grossman

37. “I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.” - Cormac McCarthy

38. “Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

39. “Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

40. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.” - H.G. Wells

41. “Il ne faut pas désespérer les imbéciles, avec un peu d'entraînement on peut en faire des militaires.” - Pierre Desproges

42. “The great proliferation of museums in the nineteenth century was a product of the marriage of the exhibition as a way of awakening intelligent interest in the visitor with the growth of collections that was associated with empire and middle-class affluence. Attendance at museums was as much associated with moral improvement as with explanation of the human or natural world.” - Richard Fortey

43. “The willingness to change one’s mind in the light of new evidence is a sign of rationality not weakness.” - Stuart Sutherland

44. “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.” - J. Krishnamurti

45. “Infinite is a meaningless word: except – it states / The mind is capable of performing / an endless process of addition.” - Louis Zukofsky

46. “Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.” - Wilkie Collins

47. “I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)” - Elizabeth Peters

48. “You have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.” - Oscar Wilde

49. “It is impossible to imagine existence void of any intelligence.” - Kedar Joshi

50. “When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

51. “My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.” - Diane Setterfield

52. “A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” - Bertrand Russell

53. “What'll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?" demanded Miss Haydock."Well, Eve -- it will be awkward if I do that. Poor lamb! I shall have to make him believe I only did it by looking fragile and pathetic at the viva.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

54. “A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

55. “I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face.” - Margaret Mitchell

56. “An opinion should be the result of thought, not a substitute for it. ” - Jef Mallett

57. “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.” - Henri Poincare

58. “But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.” - Muriel Barbery

59. “If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?” - Frans de Waal

60. “I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!” - Richard P. Feynman

61. “To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me.” - Robert K. Massie

62. “Great minds with great ideas usually share in the midst of their persecution” - Jeremy Aldana

63. “In the days when hyenas of hate suckle the babes of men, and jackals of hypocrisy pimp their mothers’ broken hearts, may children not look to demons of ignorance for hope.” - Aberjhani

64. “The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident.” - W.H. Auden

65. “What sets humans apart from animals is that we have to walk around saying how smart we are, and animals just live their lives.” - Chanctetinyea J. J. Ouellette

66. “Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

67. “It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise.” - George R.R. Martin

68. “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.” - Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz

69. “Wisdom is nothing more than the marriage of intelligence and compassion.And, as with all good unions, it takes much experience and time to reach its widest potential.Have you introduced your intellect to your compassion yet? Be careful; lately, intellect has taken to eating in front of the TV and compassion has taken in too many cats.” - Vera Nazarian

70. “A person that has more intelligence than education always makes his own grade!” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

71. “There's a stark difference between the words 'prodigy' and 'genius.' Prodigies can very quickly learn what other people have already figured out; geniuses discover that which no one has ever previously discovered. Prodigies learn; geniuses do.” - John Green

72. “Being able to embrace contradictions is a sign of intelligence.Or insanity.” - Richard Kadrey

73. “Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or the most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.” - Samuel Johnson

74. “The experience of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral is the consequences of perception.” - Allan Lokos

75. “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” - Johannes Kepler

76. “Once, in his first term, Cartwright had been bold enough to ask him why he was clever, what exercises he did to keep his brain fit. Healey had laughed."It's memory, Cartwright, old dear. Memory, the mother of the Muses... at least that's what thingummy said.""Who?""You know, what's his name, Greek poet chap. Wrote the Theogony... what was he called? Begins with an 'H'.""Homer?""No, dear. Not Homer, the other one. No, it's gone. Anyway. Memory, that's the key.” - Stephen Fry

77. “Why is being a nerd bad? Saying I notice you’re a nerd is like saying, ‘Hey, I notice that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Linsey Lohan. Why is that?” - John Green

78. “Some molecules - ammonia, carbon dioxide, water - show up everywhere in the universe, whether life is present or not. But others pop up especially in the presence of life itself. Among the biomarkers in Earth's atmosphere are ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons from aerosol sprays, vapor from mineral solvents, escaped coolants from refrigerators and air conditioners, and smog from the burning of fossil fuels. No other way to read that list: sure signs of the absence of intelligence.” - Neil deGrasse Tyson

79. “The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated.” - Criss Jami

80. “Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what are called 'political opinions' with that grand aspiration after progress with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith, which, in our days, should be the very foundation of all generous intelligence.” - Victor Hugo

81. “He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.” - Jack London

82. “I’d been traveling in Asia long enough to know that monkeys there are nothing like their trombone-playing, tambourine-banging cousins I’d seen on TV as a kid. Free-living Asian primates possess a characteristic I found shocking and confusing the first time I saw it: self-respect. If you make the mistake of holding the gaze of a street monkey in India, Nepal, or Malaysia, you’ll find you’re facing a belligerently intelligent creature whose expression says, with a Robert DeNiro–like scowl, “What the hell are you looking at? You wanna piece of me?” Forget about putting one of these guys in a little red vest.” - Christopher Ryan

83. “Wealth can be created. Wit and intelligence can't.” - Nicole Williams

84. “Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.” - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

85. “The intelligent desire self-control; children want candy.” - Rumi

86. “No matter how smart you might appear to be later with your set of diplomas on their fine white parchment, the mistakes you made before the real lessons sunk in never fade. No matter how high you hang those official documents with their official seals and signatures, how shinning and polished the frame, your reflection in the glass will never let you forget how stupid you felt when you didn't know any better.” - Tupelo Hassman

87. “Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.” - Idries Shah

88. “Mobs have passions, not brains.” - Dan Simmons

89. “Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.” - Criss Jami

90. “Intelligence alone is not nearly enough when it comes to acting wisely.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

91. “Not stupid. Overly trusting, maybe, but that reflects on his lack of trustworthiness, not on your intelligence.” - Tammara Webber

92. “But I've learned that intelligence alone doesn't mean a damned thing. Here in your university, intelligence, education, knowledge, have all become great idols. But I know now there's one thing you've all overlooked: intelligent and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn...Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love...Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.” - Daniel Keyes

93. “This is probably the advantage of being stupid. Stupid people just do. We tend to overthink. If we could eliminate the “over” and just think, then we could do, too. Only we’d be smarter doers because we’d be thinkers.” - Sarah Strohmeyer

94. “In the republic of mediocrity, genius is dangerous.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

95. “If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.” - John Fowles

96. “People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.” - Helen Keller

97. “Sono così intelligente che a volte non capisco una sola parola di quel che sto dicendo.” - Oscar Wilde

98. “A consciência da insonsciência da vida é o mais antigo imposto à inteligência.” - Fernando Pessoa

99. “But pattern-matching doesn't equal comprehension.” - Peter Watts

100. “[T]he more clamour we make about 'the women's point of view', the more we rub it into people that the women's point of view is different, and frankly I do not think it is -- at least in my job. The line I always want to take is, that there is the 'point of view' of the reasonably enlightened human brain, and that this is the aspect of the matter which I am best fitted to uphold.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

101. “Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.” - Henry James Sr.

102. “Più intelligenza avrai, più soffrirai.” - Schopenhauer, Arthur

103. “Intelligence is not measured by the mind's ability to compute, but by the heart's will to contrive.” - Kimberly Stedronsky

104. “We know that the war against intelligence is always waged in the name of common sense.” - Roland Barthes

105. “There is no method but to be very intelligent.” - T. S. Eliot

106. “Humans are mortal. So are ideas. An idea needs propagation as much as a plant needs watering. Otherwise both will wither and die.” - Bhim Rao Ambedkar

107. “Any girl can be glamorous. All she has to do is stand still and look stupid.” - Hedy Lamarr

108. “I am beautiful for a brainy woman, brainy for a beautiful woman, but objectively speaking, neither beautiful nor brainy.” - Rebecca Goldstein

109. “Ambitious people understand intelligent people far better than intelligent people understand ambitious people; therefore, ambition will always triumph over intelligence. Once you appreciate this reality, civilization becomes clearer and unfortunately, more distressing.” - D.A. Blankinship

110. “There is no battle or engagement with any institution, company or government; it is always an engagement of ideas.” - Bryant McGill

111. “What a feeble thing intelligence is, with its short steps, its waverings, its pacings back and forth, its disastrous retreats! Intelligence is a mere instrument of circumstances. There are people who say that intelligence must have built the universe - why, intelligence never built a steam-engine! Circumstances built a steam-engine. Intelligence is little more than a short foot-rule by which we measure the infinite achievements of Circumstances.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

112. “One’s opinion should only be as strong as one’s knowledge on the matter.” - Eric Hirzel

113. “Kindness is the supreme intelligence.” - Bryant McGill

114. “Some years ago I read a book that brought Einstein's theory of relativity down to an eighth grade level. This convinced me that any subject can be made easy. In other words, always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to experts. This person may, for some reason, be trying to shut you out. You CAN understand almost anything.” - Richard J. Maybury