“People wonder why I always dress professionally. I want to be admired for my intelligence, instead of my body.”
“The mother was holding a baby, had a stroller with what looked like twin girls around three, and had a five-year-old boy who was running around the shelves with a finger shoved up his nose. I considered warning him that if he fell, he would poke his brain out, but it struck me that losing intelligence was not something he was worried about.”
“The innocent supposition, entertained by most people, that even if they are not brilliant, they are not dumb, is correct only in a very relative sense.”
“Intelligence is perhaps but a malady, -a beautiful malady; the oysters s pearl.”
“Ser optimista o pesimista es cuestion de temperamento, no de razones.”
“In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you depart from the accepted framework of thinking. Generally speaking, it seems fair to say that the richer the intellectual substance of a field, the less there is a concern for credentials, and the greater is concern for content.”
“Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.”
“We, Equality 7-2521, were not happy in those year in the Home of the Students. It was not that the learning was too hard for us. It was that the learning was too easy. This is a great sin, to be born with a head which is too quick. It is not good to be different from our brothers, but it is evil to be superior to them. The Teachers told us so, and they frowned when they looked at us.”
“Modern intelligence won t accept anything on authority. But it will accept anything without authority.”
“Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself”
“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.”
“Intelligence without wisdom is a like a car without a steering wheel. You can drive it as long as you don’t consider steering part of driving.”
“There can be no question that parrots have more intellect than any other kind of bird, and it is this that makes them such favourite pets and brings upon them so many sorrows. ...Men will buy them ... and carry them off to all quarters of the native town, intending, I doubt not, to treat them kindly; but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel , and confinement in a solitary cell, the discipline with which we reform hardened criminals, is misery enough to a bird with an active mind, without the superadded horrors of ... life in a tin case, hung from a nail in the wall of a dark shop... Why does the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals never look into the woes of parrots? ... However happy you make her captivity, imagination will carry her at times to the green field and blue sky, and she fancies herself somewhere near the sun, heading a long file of exultant companions in swift career through the whistling air. Then she opens her mouth and rings out a wild salute to all parrots in the far world below her.”
“A person that has more intelligence than education always makes his own grade!”
“Great minds with great ideas usually share in the midst of their persecution”
“An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.”
“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.”