“Losing your way on a journey is unfortunate. But, losing your reason for the journey is a fate more cruel.”
—HG Wells (1866-1946)
"Purpose … was the first phenomenon of life: the first step from a universe in which entropy and chaos held sway toward one in which purposes residing in organisms direct external physical processes and create new physical relationships”.
― William T. Powers (1926-2013)
"Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results."
—Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"The paradox is that at the same time we've developed machines that behave more and more like humans, we've developed educational systems that push children to think like computers and behave like robots."
—Joichi Ito
“The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.”
― Laurence J. Peter (1919-1990)
"Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers."
― Roger Schank (1946-2023)
"Questions are the important thing, answers are less important. Learning to ask a good question is the heart of intelligence. Learning the answer-well, answers are for students. Questions are for thinkers."
― Roger Schank (1946-2023)
“The goals of an intelligent life, according to Socrates, is to pursue the philosophic quest—to increase one’s knowledge of self and world.”
― Timothy Leary (1920-1996)
"Intelligence is the source of technology. If we can use technology to improve intelligence, that closes the loop and potentially creates a positive feedback cycle."
― Eliezer Yudkowsky
“Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.”
― John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)
“Man does not know most of the rules on which he acts; and even what we call his intelligence is largely a system of rules which operate on him but which he does not know.”
― Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)
“If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.”
― Alan Turing (1912-1954)
“When asked what characteristics Nobel prize winning physicists had in common I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence”
― Enrico Fermi (1901-1954)
"What is intelligence, anyway? It is only a word that people use to name those unknown processes with which our brains solve problems we call hard. But whenever you learn a skill yourself, you're less impressed or mystified when other people do the same. This is why the meaning of 'intelligence' seems so elusive: It describes not some definite thing but only the momentary horizon of our ignorance about how minds might work."
― Marvin Minsky (1927-2016)
"What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle."
― Marvin Minsky (1927-2016)
“The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”
― Norbert Wiener (1894-1964)
“There is an enormous difference between life and intelligent life.”
― Marcelo Gleiser
“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”
― Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
“Intelligence is based on how efficient a species became at doing the things they need to survive.”
― Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
"There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history."
― James Lovelock (1919-2022)
“It isn't the Universe that's following our logic, it's we that are constructed in accordance with the logic of the Universe. And that gives what I might call a definition of intelligent life: something that reflects the basic structure of the Universe.”
― Fred Hoyle (1915-2001)
"Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence."
—Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
"Educators often think of building young minds that ideally make no errors. This view is an example of a bad error. Intelligence, creativity, and innovation will cease if people are prohibited from making errors."
― Gerd Gigerenzer
"Intelligent is as intelligent does."
— W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972)
"Is there a general intelligence? A universal weapon is as likely."
— W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972)
"An organism should be as intelligent as its environment — no more, no less."
— W. Ross Ashby (1903-1972)
"The ant is a collectively intelligent and individually stupid animal; man is the opposite."
—Karl von Frisch (1886–1982)
“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.”
― Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)
“Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.”
― Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)
“if one accepts Jean Piaget’s famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity.”
― David Graeber (1961-2020)
“Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”
― Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
“How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it”
― Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)
"The world holds two classes of men; intelligent men without religion, and religious men without intelligence."
― Al-Maʿarri (973-1057)
“So far as I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”
― Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
“The ability to speak does not make you intelligent.”
― George Lucas
“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”
― Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
“Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!”
― Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
“I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.”
― Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
—Socrates (470-399BC)
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
— Lao Tzu, (604-531 BC)