Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

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

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

I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

Many people, including some conservatives, have been very impressed with how brainy the president and his advisers are. But that is not quite as reassuring as it might seem.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

When we get to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever we get soon turns into mere limitation and exclusion.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.

Prejudice is a chain, it can hold you. If you prejudice, you can’t move, you keep prejudice for years. Never get nowhere with that.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

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

I don’t ascribe to myself any special competence in economic insight. I translate what I hear from highly intelligent people into political and philosophical propositions.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

We’ve been programmed, from the time that we were very, very little, about what we can’t do – about what is impossible.

It is with your aid, as the people, that I think we shall be able to preserve – not the country, for the country will preserve itself, but the institutions of the country – those institutions which have made us free, intelligent and happy – the most free, the most intelligent, and the happiest people on the globe.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.

To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.

One should never forbid what one lacks the power to prevent.

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

When things get so absurd and so stupid and so ridiculous that you just can’t bear it, you cannot help but turn everything into a joke.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

I never cut class. I loved getting A’s, I liked being smart. I liked being on time. I thought being smart is cooler than anything in the world.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

No book includes the entire world. It’s limited. And so it doesn’t seem like an aesthetic compromise to have to do that. There’s so much other material to write about.

I’m a meathead. I can’t help it, man. You’ve got smart people and you’ve got dumb people.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man’s intelligence and his comprehension… would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

I want to make something that is breathtaking. Of course, you can’t make something that is always breathtaking, or you would never be able to breathe. You would collapse.

It doesn’t take long to become aware of the presence of the CIA in Laos.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.