Alfred Bester Quotes

Intelligence is quickness in seeing things as they are.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

Intellect is not wisdom.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Intelligence is not a science.

Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.

The understanding of some men is clear, that of others brilliant. The former illumines its surroundings; the latter obscures them.

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

The test of intellect is the refusal to belabor the obvious.

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

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

Wise it is to comprehend the whole.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people - and this is true whether or not they are well-educated - is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

I want to prove you don't need to have academic syntax to be intelligent.

The analysis of concepts is for the understanding nothing more than what the magnifying glass is for sight.

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

I delight not in spreading any thing mysterious, for I consider it all lost time; but the things that all of us can see and know if we will.

The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.

I've been blessed with a good head on my shoulders and quite a good ability of discernment. I can see through people.

Not to sound corny, but intelligence is big. Everything fades, and everything can be modified. But intelligence is something you can't fake. I'm not even talking about whether you can read a thesaurus backwards. But there is a beauty in common sense.

A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.

Facts are many, but the truth is one.