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.

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

God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don’t have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I’m sure he didn’t call everybody jerks.

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.

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

Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, or independents – it does not matter. We all understand that an attack on any one of us is an attack on all of us.

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

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.

I am such a political person.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

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

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

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people.

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.

To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

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

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

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

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

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

Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries.

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.

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

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

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

Look, the American people are smart.

Myths can’t be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.

Power is competence.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

The people who hold that our culture is an oppressive patriarchy, they don’t want to admit that the current hierarchy might be predicated on competence.

I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life.

I think what it really is, is that I date creative people. And I think that what intimidates them is not my purse; it’s my mind.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

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?

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

Sometimes I don’t use the words ‚will‘ and ‚want‘ in the right way. The German word ‚will‘ is the English word ‚want,‘ so that’s a little bit of the problem.

Intelligent people should learn from their experiences. With people on the street, the bad experience has beaten them.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

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’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

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.

If we accept being talked to any kind of a way, then we are telling ourselves we are not quite worth the best. And if we have the effrontery to talk to anybody with less than courtesy, we tell ourselves and the world we are not very intelligent.

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.

People have more freedom to bring more of their personal qualities into the role they play once they have established themselves and their competence is no longer in question. But this is always within limits.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

They say somebody’s ‚street smart.‘ I feel like, if I got intelligence, it’s just a country smart.

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.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

But I was amazed at how organized the Palestinian election authority was, how competent they were in setting up their polling places and the poll workers they had.

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

Marty was an extraordinary person. Of all the boys I had dated, he was the only one who really cared that I had a brain. And he was always – well, making me feel that I was better than I thought I was.

Like music and art, love of nature is a common language that can transcend political or social boundaries.