Great Throughts Treasury

"When you study the history of life, and step back to look at this long history with the perspective of several hundred million years, you see a flow and direction in it - from the simple to the complex, from lower forms to higher, and always towards greater intelligence--and you wonder: can this history of events leading to man, with its clear direction, yet be undirected?" - Robert Jastrow

"All too often… intelligence estimates tell us more about interests and foreign policy preferences of powerful groups in government than it does about the other side’s intentions and capabilities are." - Robert Jervis

"The infinite expanse of the universe, its growth through immeasurable periods of time, the boundless range of its changes, and the rational order that pervades it all, seems to demand an infinite intelligence behind its manifestations." - David Starr Jordan

"Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize you have enough, you are truly rich." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"In terms of… intelligence operations, noise is the buzz set up by competing information signals which prevents the essential message from being heard loud and clear." - Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin

"The practical value of intelligence depends on the attitude of mind of its recipients." - Ronald Lewin, fully George Ronald Lewin

"The future belongs to those who fuse intelligence with faith, and who with courage and determination grope their way forward from chance to choice, from blind adaptation to creative evolution." - Charles Edward Merriam

"Lack of will power has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or ability." - Flower A. Newhouse

"Intelligence alone is dangerous if it is not subjected to the intuitive or rational perception of moral values. It has led, not only to materialism, but to monstrosities." -

"We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement." - Rosemary Radford Ruether

"Since everything that comes into the human minds enters through the gates of sense, man’s first reason is a reason of sense-experience. It is this that serves as a foundation for the reason of the intelligence; our first teachers in natural philosophy are our feet, hands, and eyes. To substitute books for them does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Evolution progresses toward greater cooperation by discovering ways to build cooperative organization out of components that are self-interested… Evolution’s ultimate goal is an intelligence-filled, life-filled, cooperative universe." - John Stewart

"Intelligence alone, without wisdom and empathy for suffering, is hollow." -

"Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." -

"The primary factor in creation is consciousness. Our state of consciousness creates our world. Consciousness itself is timeless and therefore does not evolve. Consciousness is the intelligence, the organizing principle behind the arising of form. Although the unmanifested realm of pure consciousness could be considered another dimension, it is not separate from this dimension of form. Form and formlessness interpenetrate. The unmanifested flows into this dimension as awareness, inner space, Presence." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence." - John Tyndall

"Art happens - no hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about." - James Abbott McNeill Whistler

"The most distinctive qualities of the human species are extremely high intelligence, language, culture, and reliance on long-term social contracts. In combination they gave early Homo sapiens a decisive edge of all competing animal species, but they also exacted a price we continue to pay, composed of the shocking recognition of the self, of the finiteness of personal existence, and the chaos of the environment." -

"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - Albert Einstein

"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. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." -

"What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"For money you can have everything it is said. No, that is not true. You can buy food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; knowledge but not intelligence; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not pleasure; acquaintances, but not friendship; servants, but not faithfulness; grey hair, but not honor; quiet days, but not peace. The shell of all things you can get for money. But not the kernel. That cannot be had for money." - Arne Garborg

"It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value." -

"Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Questions are the creative acts of intelligence." - Francis "Frank" Kingdon

"If you must work for money, find a way to work and be happy. That is financial intelligence." - Robert Kiyosaki, fully Robert Toru Kiyosaki

"The ability to focus attention on important things is a defining characteristic of intelligence." - Robert J. Shiller, fully Robert James "Bob" Shiller

"We underrate our brains and our intelligence. Education has become such a complicated and overregulated activity that learning is regarded as something difficult that the brain would rather not do... But reluctance to learning cannot be attributed to the brain. Learning is one of the brain's primary functions, its constant concern, and we become restless and frustrated if there is no learning to be done. We are all capable of high and unsuspected learning accomplishments without effort." - Frank Smith

"Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shame, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision." -

"Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shame, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision." -

"Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardour, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shame, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision." -

"Married love is a creative enterprise. It is not achieved by accident or instinct. Perfunctory coitus is a confession of lack of intelligence and character. There is a profound beauty and even holiness in the act of fecundation." - Alexis Carrel

"The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the nervous system. Each element of the body adjusts itself to the others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation is essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, and the future as well as the present." - Alexis Carrel

"If we attribute an intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, the future as well as the present." - Alexis Carrel

"It is faith and not reason which impels men to action. Intelligence is content to point out the road but never drives along it." - Alexis Carrel

"In the study of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on hardheaded clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the mode in which human intelligence functions." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Certain things we cannot accomplish... by any process of government. We cannot legislate intelligence. We cannot legislate morality. No, and we cannot legislate loyalty, for loyalty is a kind of morality." - Alfred Whitney Griswold

"The greatest intelligence is precisely the one that suffers most from its own limitations." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value." - Arthur C Clarke, formally Sir Arthur Charles Clark

"I should be inclined to claim that the person who limits his interests to the means of living without consideration of the content or meaning of his life is defeating God's great purpose when he brought into existence a creature with the intelligence and godlike powers that are found in man. It is in living wisely and fully that one's soul grows." - Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton

"History has always been the favorite study of those who wish to learn something without having to face the effort demanded by any branch of real knowledge, which taxes the intelligence." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"The human mind turned downwards takes cognizance of the world reported to it by the senses; turned upwards it receives intuitional knowledge and directions from pure intelligence, which is its source and essence... The mind finds itself not merely cognizing and arranging the world reported by the senses but striving to rule it and in fact ruled by it. This is a cruel paradox, for by desiring one thing and fearing another the pseudo-self or ego subordinates itself to the senses and the world they report. Thus it comes to be torn between conflicting passions and subject to the tyranny of events." - Arthur W Osborn

"He appears to have been educated beyond his intelligence." - Author Unknown NULL

"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes but quickly to see how to make them good." - Bertolt Brecht

"The fact that religions can be so shamelessly dishonest, so contemptuous of the intelligence of their adherents, and still flourish does not speak very well for the tough-mindedness of the believers. But it does not indicate, if a demonstration were needed, that near the core of the religious experience is something remarkably resistant to rational inquiry." - Carl Sagan

"I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best on our curious heritage prevail." - Charles A. Beard, fully Charles Austin Beard

"God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze