If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.

These little grey cells. It is up to them.

Iron sharpens iron; scholar, the scholar.

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.

Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.

There is no great genius without some touch of madness.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

Wise thinkers prevail everywhere.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

Genius is talent set on fire by courage.

Common sense is not so common.

An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.

To think is to practice brain chemistry.

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

Wit is educated insolence.

I'm not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.

Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.

Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.

An intellectual is a man who doesn't know how to park a bike.

The mind of man has perplexed itself with many hard questions. Is space infinite, and in what sense? Is the material world infinite in extent, and are all places within that extent equally full of matter? Do atoms exist or is matter infinitely divisible?

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Thought is a strenuous art - few practice it, and then only at rare times.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.

The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.

I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals - and the most silly.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers.

There is no method but to be very intelligent.

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Be as smart as you can, but remember that it is always better to be wise than to be smart.

The emotional brain responds to an event more quickly than the thinking brain.

A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, a sense of humor, and be kind. It's the same qualities I require from a man.

I'm a big advocate of financial intelligence.

I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

You have to be smart. The easy days are over.

Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Genius is the ability to renew one's emotions in daily experience.

Wherever smart people work, doors are unlocked.

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.

One thought fills immensity.

Man knows so much and does so little.

I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Be smarter than other people, just don't tell them so.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.

It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

Genius ain't anything more than elegant common sense.

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde.

The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people.