Andre Gide Quotes

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

I obtain great satisfaction out of using my intellect.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

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.

I mean people up here aren't stupid, I'm lower gene pool and I kind of sit in amazement at watching some of them because they are pretty damn smart.

Thinking clearly and effectively is the greatest asset of any human being.

Don't leave home without your sword - your intellect.

I was very intellectually oriented, very early on.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

I'd have liked to have been a bit more intellectual. I'd have liked to have had more brains.

I'm pretty smart.

I just think knowledge makes the world go 'round, man. So, if that makes me a geek, then cool.

Life is very much about making the best decisions you can. So I think chess is very valuable.

Peyton's pretty good at figuring stuff out.

I'm quite sharp but not particularly academic.

It is true that one has to think first and then to act - but it's also true that if one has no possibility of acting, one's thinking kind of becomes empty and stupid.

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent.

Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.

Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.

Games sometimes require lateral thinking. They sometimes require quite skilled hand-eye coordination and so on. But they're not in any sense intelligent in the way that you want your children to develop intelligence to make the mind not just supple, but actually informed.

Botvinnik tried to take the mystery out of Chess, always relating it to situations in ordinary life. He used to call chess a typical inexact problem similar to those which people are always having to solve in everyday life.

For intelligent people, action often means escape from thought, but it is a reasonable and a wise escape.

I learned a lot. I really did. Millennium is a state of mind. I always thought of Frank Black as the greatest chess player that could take random pieces of information and string them together into a scenario that was accurate. I never thought of him as a psychic at all. We need people like that.

You can't be wise without being intelligent, but you certainly can be intelligent without being wise.