Intelligence Quotes

This is a big collection of intelligence quotes that should inspire you to exercise your mind!

1) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are portals of discovery. -James Joyce

2) Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training. -Anna Freud

3) A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled. -Plutarch

4) A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one’s own ignorance. -Niccolo Machiavelli

5) On artificial intelligence: the real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do. -B.F Skinner

6) A small mind is obstinate. A great mind can lead and be led. -Alexander Cannon

7) Always be smarter than the people who hire you. -Lena Horne

8 ) An intellectual is a person whose mind watches itself. -Albert Camus

9) Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain and most fools do. -Dale Carnegie

10) Chance favours the prepared mind. -Louis Pasteur

11) Don’t be afraid to ask dumb questions. They’re easier to handle than dumb mistakes. -Carolyn Coats

12) Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don’t have film. -Unknown Author

13) Everyone is brilliant some of the time, and no one is that way all the time. -Kathleen Cushmes

14) Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind. -J. Krishnamurti

15) Failures are divided into two classes: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought. -John Charles Salak

16) For every student with a spark of brilliance, there is about ten with ignition trouble. -Milton Berle

17) Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. -Thomas A. Edison

18) Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt

19) Questions are the creative acts of intelligence. -Frank Kingdom

20) We are either fools or undiscovered geniuses. -Bonnie Lin

21) The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from one who does. -Herbert (Victor) Prochnow, Sr

22) Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara falls. Intelligence is not trying. -Anonymous

23) The function of genius is not to give new answers, but pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. -Hugh Trevor-Roper

24) It is not the IQ but the I Will that is most important in education. -Anonymous

25) People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. -Ed Maier

26) Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along without education. Education enables a man to get along without the use of his intelligence. -Albert Edward Wiggam

27) Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven. -Edward De Bono

28) Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong. -David Fasold

29) The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him. -Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

30) We should take care not to make the intellect our god: it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

31) The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it. -Frank M. Garafola

32) Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid. -Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

33) To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life. -Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1895)

34) Ask a wise man to dinner and he’ll upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and you’ll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the people’s entertainment. -Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536)

35) You cannot be very smart if you have never done anything foolish. -French Proverb

36) Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them. -Albert Einstein

37) Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances. -George Eliot (1819-1880)

38) There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have. -Don Herold

39) The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. -F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

40) If a man’s eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow. -Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

I really like 4, 11, and 18.  How about you?  And do you have any quotes/comments on this subject?  Go to the “Leave A Reply” section below.

-Shawn