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

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.

I have so much in my life. I want to be of value to the world.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.

The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

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

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

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

It’s rare for anyone to value the opinions of a teenage girl.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

People are getting smarter nowadays; they are letting lawyers, instead of their conscience, be their guide.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

What is my life if I am no longer useful to others.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

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.

I certainly know that I would not be able to survive if it were not for the fact that I am being upheld by the prayers of so many people.

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

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!

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.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

I’m grateful to intelligent people. That doesn’t mean educated. That doesn’t mean intellectual. I mean really intelligent. What black old people used to call ‚mother wit‘ means intelligence that you had in your mother’s womb. That’s what you rely on. You know what’s right to do.

We can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I expected to die. At no time before the trial did I expect to escape with my life. Yet being executed in the gas chamber did not necessarily mean defeat. It could be one more step to bring the community to a higher level of consciousness.

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.

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.

The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

A divorce is like an amputation: you survive it, but there’s less of you.

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

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

The theory seems to be that as long as a man is a failure he is one of God’s children, but that as soon as he succeeds he is taken over by the Devil.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.

What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

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

Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.

We have food all around us all the time, and if we haven’t eaten for three hours, we think we’re starving. You’re not starving – human beings can go for 30 days without food.

The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.

I think we have a good chance of surviving long enough to colonize the solar system.