Jacques Barzun Quotes

The world belongs to people with IQs of 120. Anything much greater or less amounts to a liability.

There is no one thoroughly despicable. We cannot descend much lower than an idiot; and an idiot has some advantages over a wise man.

Other things being equal, it is better to be smart than to be stupid.

Intellect is a fire; rash and pitiless it melts this wonderful bone-house which is called man. Genius even, as it is the greatestgood, is the greatest harm.

If you only have brains on your head you would be as good a man as any of them, and a better man than some of them. Brains are the only things worth having in this world, no matter whether one is a crow or a man.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

Mind is everything. Muscle - pieces of rubber. All that I am, I am because of my mind.

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

The superiority of one mind over another depends on the rapidity with which experiences are thus organised.

I was blessed with a strong arm and a weak mind.

Cultivate the frontal portion of her brain as much as that of man is cultivated, and she will stand his equal at least. Even now, where her mind has been called out at all, her intellect is as bright, as capacious, and as powerful as his.

I think I have a superior brain and an inferior stature, if you really want to get brutal about it.

We regard intelligence as man's main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate.

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence,' we think of Einstein instead of humans.

You can't process me with a normal brain.

The brain is wider than the sky.

At 83 Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's.

You can't hang around geniuses forever because they end up taking everything you've got. That's why they're the genius and you're not.

One learns little more about a man from the feats of his literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.

[Warren] Harding is incapable of thought, because he has nothing to think with.

If he is 6 feet 4 inches high, he is only a dwarf in mind.

After all, Franklin [Delano Roosevelt] isn't very bright.

He who labors with his mind rules over he who labors with his hand

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

I knew that the most important thing a man has is in his head, and from a young age, I often studied the head structure of each person, hoping to crack his codes. I considered a high forehead a gift from God.