Intelligence can be broadly defined as the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills effectively. It encompasses various mental abilities such as reasoning, problem-solving, learning, comprehension, creativity, adaptability, and decision-making.
Intelligence is often measured through standardized tests, such as IQ (Intelligence Quotient) tests, which provide a numerical score that is meant to reflect an individual’s cognitive abilities relative to others in their age group. However, it’s important to note that intelligence is a complex and multifaceted trait that cannot be fully captured by a single test or metric.
There are different theories and perspectives on intelligence, including:
Psychometric or cognitive approach: This perspective focuses on measuring intelligence through tests that assess cognitive abilities such as verbal, mathematical, spatial, and logical reasoning skills. It emphasizes the idea of general intelligence (g factor) and specific abilities (s factors).
Multiple intelligences theory: Proposed by Howard Gardner, this theory suggests that intelligence is not a single entity, but rather a collection of different abilities or intelligence. Gardner identified several types of intelligences, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.
Emotional intelligence: Coined by psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer, emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize, understand, and manage one’s own emotions and the emotions of others. It involves skills such as self-awareness, empathy, emotional regulation, and social awareness.
Practical intelligence: Proposed by psychologist Robert Sternberg, practical intelligence relates to the ability to adapt to and solve real-life problems in various contexts. It involves skills such as common sense, street smarts, and the ability to apply knowledge effectively in practical situations.
It’s important to note that intelligence is not fixed and can be developed and enhanced through learning, education, and experiences. Additionally, intelligence should not be considered the sole determinant of a person’s worth or potential, as individuals possess a wide range of talents, skills, and qualities that contribute to their overall abilities and achievements.
Intelligence Quotes
1. “The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”
— J. Krishnamurti
2. “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”
— Albert Einstein
3. “The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more.”
— Ed Parker
4. “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
5. “Action is the real measure of intelligence.”
— Napoleon Hill
6. “The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
7. “True intelligence requires fabulous imagination.”
— Ian McEwan
8. “They think that intelligence is about noticing things are relevant (detecting patterns); in a complex world, intelligence consists in ignoring things that are irrelevant (avoiding false patterns).”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
9. “If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.”
— Lao Tzu
10. “Genius is talent set on fire by courage.”
— Henry Van Dyke
11. “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
— Stephen Hawking
12. “By the way, intelligence to me isn’t just being book-smart or having a college degree; it’s trusting your gut instincts, being intuitive, thinking outside the box, and sometimes just realizing that things need to change and being smart enough to change it.”
— Tabatha Coffey
13. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”
— Albert Einstein
14. “Intelligence is not measured by how much you know, but by how much you have the capacity to learn.”
— Francesca Zappia
15. “Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but to see quickly how to make them good.”
— Bertolt Brecht
16. “Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.”
— Albert Einstein
17. “Genius might be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way.”
— Charles Bukowski
18. “Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.”
— George Santayana
19. “Intelligence is the effort to the do the best you can at your particular job; the quality that gives dignity to that job, whether it happens to be scrubbing a floor or running a corporation.”
— James C. Penney
20. “The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
— James Madison
21. “A superior and commanding intellect, a truly great man-when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift-is not a temporary flame, burning for a while, and then expiring, giving place to eternal darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human mind; so that, when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows; but it leaves the world all light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit.”
— Daniel Webster
22. “A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
— Nelson Mandela
23. “Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.”
— Louis Pasteur
24. “There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.”
— Pablo Picasso
25. “Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.”
— Alexander Graham Bell
26. “Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”
— Joseph Story
27. “Humans have always used our intelligence and creativity to improve our existence. After all, we invented the wheel, discovered how to make fire, invented the printing press and found a vaccine for polio.”
— Naveen Jain
28. “If you have the guts to keep making mistakes, your wisdom and intelligence leap forward with huge momentum.”
— Holly Near
29. “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
— Maya Angelou
30. “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”
— Michael Jordan
31. “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt
32. “Don’t leave home without your sword – your intellect.”
— Alan Moore
33. “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.”
— Socrates
34. “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”
— Woodrow Wilson
35. “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
— Naguib Mahfouz
36. “An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.”
— Bryant H. McGill
37. “My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”
— Arthur Conan Doyle
38. “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”
— Marie Curie
39. “Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.”
— Walter H. Cottingham
40. “Education is no substitute for intelligence.”
— Frank Herbert
41. “Work alone does not suffice-the effort must be intelligent.”
— Charles B. Rogers
42. “It is better to have a fair intellect that is well used than a powerful one that is idle.”
— Bryant H. McGill
43. “Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.”
— Hermann Hess
44. “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”
— Plutarch
45. “All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
46. “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.”
— Maya Angelou
47. “It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
48. “An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.”
— Albert Camus
49. “The most fertile soil does not necessarily produce the most abundant harvest. It is the use we make of our faculties which renders them valuable.”
— Thomas W. Higginson
50. “God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.”
— Francis Bacon
51. “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
52. “The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”
— Niccolo Machiavelli
53. “A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions – as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
54. “If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
55. “There is no method but to be very intelligent.”
— T.S. Eliot
56. “Genius always finds itself a century too early.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
57. “I thank God that I’m a product of my parents. That they infected me with their intelligence and energy for life, with their thirst for knowledge and their love. I’m grateful that I know where I come from.”
— Shakira
58. “These little grey cells. It is up to them.”
— Agatha Christie
59. “When a thought takes one’s breath away, a grammar lesson seems an impertinence.”
— Thomas Wentworth Higginson
60. “To think well and to consent to obey someone giving good advice are the same thing.”
— Herodotus
61. “We should never overestimate an audience’s culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.”
— Robert Lepage
62. “Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
63. “The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
— John Keats
64. “Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
65. “Iron sharpens iron; scholar, the scholar.”
— William Drummond
66. “Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.”
— Annie Besant
67. “Man’s brain is, after all, the greatest natural resource.”
— Karl Brandt
68. “Unintelligent people always look for a scapegoat.”
— Ernest Bevin
69. “Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
70. “Without consciousness and intelligence, the universe would lack meaning.”
— Clifford D. Simak
71. “Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.”
— Walter Cronkite
72. “The sign of an intelligent people is their ability to control their emotions by application of reason.”
— Marya Mannes
73. “The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.”
— Carl Sagan
74. “It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.”
— G.H. Hardy
75. “Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”
— Isaac Asimov