Top 100 Intelligence Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.”

— Osho

Also featured in: Individuality Quotes, Quotes About Ideas

2. “Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences.”

— Howard Gardner

Also featured in: Education Quotes

3. “We are an intelligent species and the use of our intelligence quite properly gives us pleasure. In this respect the brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Quotes About Thinking, Knowledge Quotes, Intelligent Quotes

4. “All warfare is based on deception. There is no place where espionage is not used. Offer the enemy bait to lure him.”

— Sun Tzu

Also featured in: Strategy Quotes, Hard Hitting Quotes, Fighting Quotes

5. “I don't want to believe. I want to know.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Universe Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Truth Quotes

6. “I think, therefore I am.”

— René Descartes

Also featured in: Identity Quotes, Quotes About Thinking, Intelligent Quotes, Truth Quotes

7. “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

— George Carlin

Also featured in: Funny Quotes, Hilarious Quotes, Crazy Quotes

8. “A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”

— Alan Turing

Also featured in: Science Quotes, IT Quotes

9. “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

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Smart Quotes

10. “No man was ever wise by chance.”

— Seneca

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Smart Quotes, Philosophy Quotes

11. “Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.”

— Linus Torvalds

Also featured in: Silly Quotes, IT Quotes, Hilarious Quotes, Clever Quotes

12. “I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Also featured in: Learning Quotes, Experience Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Character Quotes

13. “Girls should never be afraid to be smart.”

— Emma Watson

Also featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Positive Quotes for Women, Values Quotes, Motivational Quotes for Women, Smart Quotes

14. “It’s not how smart you are that matters, what really counts is how you are smart.”

— Howard Gardner

Also featured in: Smart Quotes

15. “When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.”

— Isaac Asimov

16. “It is very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence, it is not the triumph of heart over head – it is the unique intersection of both.”

— David Caruso

Also featured in: Quotes About Feelings

17. “CEOs are hired for their intellect and business expertise – and fired for a lack of emotional intelligence.”

— Daniel Goleman

Also featured in: Leadership Quotes, Emotion Quotes

18. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.”

— Edward Snowden

Also featured in: IT Quotes, Government Quotes, Trust No One Quotes

19. “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers. They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.”

— Alan Turing

Also featured in: Technology Quotes

20. “Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.”

— René Descartes

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes, Math Quotes

21. “The intelligent man is never bored.”

— Isaac Asimov

Also featured in: Intelligent Quotes, Smart Quotes, Clever Quotes

22. “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Lifelong Learning Quotes, Smart Quotes, Witty Quotes, Short Deep Quotes

23. “Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.”

— Isaac Asimov

24. “The day you stop learning is the day you begin decaying.”

— Isaac Asimov

Also featured in: Learning Quotes, Curiosity Quotes

25. “A rational man is guided by his thinking – by a process of Reason – not by his feelings and desires.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Decision-Making Quotes

26. “Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Responsibility Quotes, Quotes About Ideas

27. “I will splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”

— John F. Kennedy

28. “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”

— Naguib Mahfouz

Also featured in: Wise Quotes

29. “Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”

— Samuel Johnson

Also featured in: Curiosity Quotes, Genius Quotes

30. “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

— Donald Rumsfeld

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes

31. “A wise man first thinks and then speaks and a fool speaks first and then thinks.”

— Ali ibn Abi Talib

Also featured in: Common Sense Quotes, Smart Quotes, Quotes for Better Decisions, Virtue Quotes

32. “If a machine is expected to be infallible, it cannot also be intelligent.”

— Alan Turing

Also featured in: IT Quotes, Intelligent Quotes

33. “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”

— Charlie Munger

Also featured in: Quotes for Better Decisions

34. “The more you know, the more you see.”

— Aldous Huxley

35. “The original question, ‘Can machines think?’ I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.”

— Alan Turing

36. “The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.”

— Jeff Bezos

Also featured in: Growth Mindset Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Adaptability Quotes, Curiosity Quotes

37. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Quotes About Books And Reading, Education Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes

38. “One thing I know, that I know nothing. This is the source of my wisdom.”

— Socrates

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Curiosity Quotes, Humility Quotes

39. “O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible and hence we can hold the enemy’s fate in our hands.”

— Sun Tzu

Also featured in: Martial Arts Quotes, Quotes About War

40. “No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.”

— Voltaire

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes, Clever Quotes, Quotes About Ideas

41. “Only dumb people try to impress smart people. Smart people just do what they do.”

— Chris Rock

Also featured in: Sarcastic Quotes, Smart Quotes, Humor Quotes, Funny Quotes About Life

42. “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.”

— Galileo Galilei

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Humor Quotes

43. “Dare to think for yourself.”

— Voltaire

Also featured in: Enlightenment Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

44. “Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That’s why they look alike.”

— Daniel Goleman

Also featured in: Psychology Quotes, Empathy Quotes

45. “The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.”

— Jaggi Vasudev

Also featured in: Lifelong Learning Quotes, Curiosity Quotes

46. “The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.”

— Aldous Huxley

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Doubt Quotes

47. “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.”

— Socrates

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Humility Quotes, Doubt Quotes

48. “A man who cannot think is not an educated man however many college degrees he may have acquired.”

— Henry Ford

49. “I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here.”

— Arthur C. Clarke

Also featured in: Intelligent Quotes, Space Quotes

50. “The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes, Feel Better Quotes, Quotes About the Brain