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Intelligence Quotes

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Intelligence Quotes

“It is a truly superb allegory, this story of the Golden Temple: the allegory of evil's revenge, of destruction as the only way out from beauty and the excess of beauty. But not just beauty. Evil can also befall intelligence. Intelligence protects us from nothing - not even from stupidity. Being intelligent is not enough, then, to prevent one from being stupid, and sometimes intelligence even lives in stupidity's shade, and vice versa. Not only does intelligence not mark the end of stupidity, there is no other way out from excess of intelligence but stupidity. In keeping with an implacable reversibility, stupidity lies in wait for it, as its shadow, as its double. Only thought, only lucidity, which stands as much opposed to intelligence as to stupidity, can escape this trial of strength. But there is no rule, no more for good than for evil: they chase each other endlessly around the Moebius strip. Given the hellish production of collective intelligence, we shall have to reckon in the future with an ever-higher rate of artificial stupidity.”

“Angels are good not simply because they see bad as bad, but also because they see bad as corny.”

“When Albert Einstein told you to hide your source, he wasn't giving you a deliberate advice to conceal the root in which you're growing, but was to conceal the root from the eyes of people that will dare to uproot it.”

“Uncommon success is found on the spiritual plane; you can't get there through common convention or following others. Hard work is not enough; many work slavishly-hard for little reward. Intelligence is insufficient; how many educated and brilliant people there are who fail utterly and completely. Goodness is not enough; how many meek and good souls are tilled into the earth like manure by demigods to fertilize their golden crops. There is something more — it is the unseen essential, and everyone has access to it.”

“Isolation has carved me in its image and likeness. The presence of another person – of any person whatsoever – instantly slows down my thinking, and while for a normal man contact with others is a stimulus to spoken expression and wit, for me it is a counterstimulus, if this compound word be linguistically permissible. When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Yes, talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial, and in them intelligence gleams like an image in a mirror.”

“Like all great things which then become fashions, science, as now the universal stamp of approval, probably receives more abuse than any other field of study. Glaze the word itself over whatever vague ideology one may presume ratified, no matter the degree of pseudo-science or lack of scholarly credibility packaged within, and the many will consume it like gravy on a feast. My thought for the time is that as the promise of true science increases, so shall rise its many more superficial counterparts as provided by the agenda-bound trendies and hyper-ambitious laypersons to boot.”

“No matter how knowledgeable you are, respect your parents for their experience and your children for their curiosity.”

“{Miller, who was president of American Federation of Musicians, had this to say about Robert Ingersoll at his funeral} On behalf of 15,000 professional musicians, comprising the American Federation of Musicians, permit me to extend to you our heart-felt and most sincere sympathy in the irreparable loss of the model husband, father, and friend. In him the musicians of not only this country, but of all countries, have lost one whose noble nature grasped the true beauties of our sublime art, and whose intelligence gave those impressions expression in words of glowing eloquence that will live as long as language exists.”