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.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

Almost everybody is born a genius and buried an idiot.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.

I ran into Isosceles. He had a great idea for a new triangle!

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

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

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

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

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.

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

Look, the American people are smart.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

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?

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

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

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

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

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known.

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

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

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

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

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.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

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

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.

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

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

An idea, to be suggestive, must come to the individual with the force of revelation.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

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

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

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

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?

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

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.

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

A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

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.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Only he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.

Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.

No one in this world, so far as I know – and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me – has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

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

The sexiest people are thinkers. Nobody’s interested in somebody who’s just vain with a hole in their head, talking about the latest thing – there is no latest thing. It’s all rubbish.

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

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

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.