Hello fellow researchers, I wonder if you can help me, where I have
failed.  I am looking for a quote, from contemporary or popular
culture, about intelligence.  The sort of quote that you would find at
the beginning of a chapter about intelligence (which is what it's
for).  Mention of intelligence in some way in a recent-ish popular
song (or even popular artist) would be good.  Mention in a recent film
would be good.  (That's not an exclusive list - lots of things would
be good.) It shouldn't be about artificial intelligence, rather the
kind of intelligence that people have in varying quantities.

More than one would be fantastic.

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Request for Question Clarification by shiva777-ga on 10 May 2003 11:56 PDT

Hi Jeremy. I looked around quite a few quote pages and came up with
these. There were a lot more, but I thought these were the best. If
any are usable for you let me know and I will post as an answer. I
couldn't find any good ones in movies or song lyrics... not to say
there aren't any, but the search capabilities for these on the net are
not as good as general quotes. Anyway hope you enjoy these.
-shiva777

Belief is the death of intelligence.
Robert Anton Wilson

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply
have their bright ideas closer together.
Georg C. Lichtenberg 

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists
elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
 Calvine from "Calvin and Hobbes" (Bill Watterson)

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.
Harriet Martineau 

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.
--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not
sure about the the universe.
Albert Einstein

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Clarification of Question by jeremymiles-ga on 10 May 2003 12:27 PDT

Hi Shiva777,
They aren't quite what I was after, but they are OK.  Post your search
strategy for me as an answer, and that's good enough for me, thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by shiva777-ga on 11 May 2003 08:22 PDT

Hi Jeremy. I'm just letting this one run because I knew my fellow
researchers would contribute more. If you seen a quote that you like
enough to use, you can pick that contributor as the 'winner' of the
question! -shiva777

---

Clarification of Question by jeremymiles-ga on 13 May 2003 03:50 PDT

Hello shiva777 - I asked another question for websearcher to take
something.  It wasn't a big sum of money, and you did emough work to
take it, so I think you should.

Jeremy

Hi jeremymiles:

How about...

"Intelligence! Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence."
From movie "Rear Window, said by Stella
URL: http://home.earthlink.net/~ajdlro/rear.html

websearcher

Here are some others you might like.
--ravuri-ga

Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
Time Bandits

Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the
intelligence?  There's one marked Brightness, but it doesn't work.
Gallagher

Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant.
The population is growing.

I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity.  The
reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and
plays and literature and all that stuff.  If somebody knows quite a
lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether
they're really stupid or not.  It took me years to find out...
J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye 

Dr. Chumley, my mother used to say to me, "In this world, Elwood" --
she always called me Elwood -- she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you
must be oh, so smart, or oh, so pleasant."  For years I was smart.  I
recommend pleasant.  You may quote me.
Elwood P. Dowd in the play "Harvey" by Mary Chase (1907-1981)

If anything, the essence of intelligence would seem to be in knowing
when to think and act quickly, and knowing when to think and act
slowly.
Robert J. Sternberg (Yale psychologist), in Sohan Modgil and Celia
Modgil, Arthur Jensen: Consensus and Controversy (Brighton: Taylor &
Francis, 1987).  Cited in James Gleick, Faster: The Acceleration of
Just About Everything (New York: Pantheon, 1999), p. 114.

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a
superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between
considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap.
Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect

Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.
Michael Levine, Lessons at the Midway Point: Lessons for Life
(Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1995)

Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of
average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is
separate from the way the car is driven.
Edward de Bono

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual
issues; it means taking pleasure in them.
Jacob Bronowski, American scientist, author, philosopher

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a
starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.
Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946), U.S. feminist critic. Right-Wing Women, ch.
2 (1978).

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and
more sense than we have.
Don Herold

Sensual pleasures are like soap bubbles, sparkling, effervescent. The
pleasures of intellect are calm, beautiful, sublime, ever enduring and
climbing upward to the borders of the unseen world.
John H. Aughey

People who are smart get into Mensa.  People who are really smart look
around and leave.
James Randi

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

"Stupid is as stupid does."
- FOREST GUMP

Regards;
tutuzdad-ga

"There's no accountin' for intelligence."  ~ J. D. Vick ~

I've always loved this bit of dialogue from the film "The Wizard of
Oz":

SCARECROW: I haven't got a brain. Just straw.

DOROTHY: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?

SCARECROW: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful
lot of talking, don't they?

A man of underrated intelligence, PM John Major, once said:

"Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be 'too clever by
half'. The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three
quarters."

"Some recent thinkers seem to have given their moral support to these
deplorable verdicts by affirming that an individual's intelligence is
a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased. We must protest
and react against this brutal pessimism; we must try to demonstrate
that it is founded upon nothing." Alfred Binet, 1909 (quoted in
Stephen J. Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, a fine book on the subject)

--mt

Hi,

These are not the most temporary, but maybe they help. From "Your
Ultimate Success Quotation Library - Intelligence and Intellectuals":

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the
intelligent full of doubt."
-- Bertrand Russell, 1872-1970, British Philosopher, Mathematician,
Essayist

"Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of
average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is
separate from the way the car is driven."
-- Edward De Bono, 1933-, British Writer On Thinking Process

"A person of intellect without energy added to it, is a failure."
-- Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort , 1741-1794, French Writer,
Journalist, Playwright

"A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of
intelligence."
- Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, British Author

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-, British Science Fiction Writer

"It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value."
-- Stephen Hawking, 1942-, British Theoretical Physicist

"Undernourished intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a
starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use."
--Andrea Dworkin, 1946-, American Feminist Critic

"Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them."
-- Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German-born American Physicist

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."
-- Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, German-born American Physicist

"An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell
more than he knows."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890-1969, Thirty-fourth President of the USA

"Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong."
-- David Fasold

"Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in
a situation previously considered disordered."
-- Haneef Fatmi

"The difference between a smart man and a wise man is that a smart man
knows what to say, a wise man knows whether or not to say it."
-- Frank M. Garafola

"The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible
man hardly anything."
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, 1749-1832, German Poet, Dramatist,
Novelist

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head
could carry all he knew."
-- Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774, Anglo-Irish Author, Poet, Playwright

"He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, 1929-, American Author

"A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of
Picasso."
-- A. P. Herbert, 1890-1971, British Author, Politician

"A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence."
-- Brander Matthews, 1852-1929, American Writer

"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and
more sense than we have."
-- Don Herold

"Unless one is a genius, it is best to aim at being intelligible."
-- Anthony Hope, 1863-1933, British Writer

"Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, But quickly to see how to
make them good."
-- Elbert Hubbard, 1859-1915, American Author, Publisher

"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."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Italian Author, Statesman

"The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control
emotions by the application of reason."
-- Marya Mannes, 1904-1990, American Writer

"The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure."
-- Laurence J. Peter

"It's good to be clever, but not to show it."
-- French Proverb

"You don't need intelligence to have luck, but you do need luck to
have intelligence."
-- Jewish Proverb

"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."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German Philosopher

"Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about."
-- Solomon Short

"Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas."
-- Susan Sontag, 1933-, American Essayist

"Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
intelligence."
-- Henrik Tikkanen

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual
superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong
proves his moral inferiority to any creatures that cannot."
-- Mark Twain, 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer

"I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution
so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival."
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1922-, American Novelist

"Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability,
which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended."
-- Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947, British Mathematician,
Philosopher

"Intelligence appears to be the thing that enables a man to get along
without education. Education enables a man to get along without the
use of his intelligence."
-- Albert Edward Wiggam

"The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an
instrument on which one plays, that is all."
-- Oscar Wilde, 1856-1900, British Author, Wit

"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into
the green valleys of silliness."
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1889-1951, Austrian Philosopher

"The good are so harsh to the clever, the clever so rude to the good!"
-- Elizabeth Wordsworth

Jeremy, I wanted to add that my search strategy was simply to visit
quotation sites like the ones listed here:
http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Quotations/?il=1
and do searches for the word 'intelligence' and related words.
(intelligent, smart, etc). I also attempted to find some search movie
quote sites and lyric quote sites, but a couldn't find any really good
searchable ones. Most of the lyric sites allow you to search by title
or artist only.

-shiva777

Here is a goodie from one of my favorite authors, the late Douglas
Adams:

"Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins
because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so
on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water
having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins believed themselves
to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons."

(from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy")