Man is the only animal capable of reasoning, though many others possess the faculty of memory and instruction in common with him.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

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

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

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

Voters quickly forget what a man says.

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

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.

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

It takes a smart man to play dumb.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

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.

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

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.

I’m crepuscular.

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

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

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.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

There are four Powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.

I have never kept diaries. I just remember a lot and am more self-centered than most people.

Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time… I think I’ve forgotten this before.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Living animals are too eccentric in their movements, and the law of gravitation usually draws me from my seat upon them to a lower level; therefore, I am not an inveterate lover of horseback.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

The memory of that scene for me is like a frame of film forever frozen at that moment: the red carpet, the green lawn, the white house, the leaden sky. The new president and his first lady.

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

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

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

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

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

If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.

Why there is one body in our System qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason but because the Author of the System thought it convenient; and why there is but one body of this kind, I know no reason, but because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

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

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

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.

I only see clearly what I remember.

There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.

My mind doesn’t work, my memories don’t work like a computer file where I can just retrieve them and, boy, there it is. My mind is selective in terms of memories. When I try to think back to college or high school, there are gaps. I try to fill them in. But I can’t tell you it’s always the truth.

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.

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.

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.