Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

My opponent has all the intellectual rigor of an amoeba.

These people being of a sharp and acute intellect, and gifted with a rich and powerful understanding, excel in whatever studies they pursue, and are more quick and cunning than the other inhabitants of a western clime.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

Though man a thinking being is defined, Few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few! How many never think, who think they do!

In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.

He is not to pass for a man of reason who stumbles upon reason by chance but he who knows it and can judge it and has a true taste for it.

Where you don't have people who have strong intellectual capacity, you get demagoguery.

He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to talk others down, or to appear always in the right.

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

He wasn't smart enough to see it, said Jason Bourne. He couldn't think geometrically.

He had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it

I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

Serious thinkers are few, and the world is ruled by crude ideas.

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

It's true that people do assume that people who are critical are smarter than people who are uncritical.

Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and will power.

Perhaps the best test of a man's intelligence is his capacity for making a summary.

Here's one thing I never say anymore: These people can't be that stupid, can they?

Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.

You know very well that I no longer think. I am far too intelligent for that.

There is an unusually high and consistent correlation between the stupidity of a given person and that person’s propensity to be impressed by the measurement of IQ.

The class of those who have the ability to think their own thoughts is separated by an unbridgeable gulf from the class of those who cannot.

Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.

Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is worthless.

I know that knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing - but they do live in the same neighborhood. I know once again, firsthand, the joy of learning.