Top 200 Intelligent Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The intelligent man is never bored.”

— Isaac Asimov

102. “Ideas are bulletproof.”

— Alan Moore

103. “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

— Benjamin Franklin

104. “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”

— William Ernest Henley

105. “Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.”

— Bruce Lee

106. “Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.”

— Henry David Thoreau

107. “Vision is a destination – a fixed point to which we focus all effort. Strategy is a route – an adaptable path to get us where we want to go.”

— Simon Sinek

108. “You need to surround yourself with quality human beings that are intelligent and have a vision.”

— Vince McMahon

109. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

110. “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

111. “Routine, in an intelligent man, is a sign of ambition.”

— W.H. Auden

112. “I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am.”

— Cormac McCarthy

113. “There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

114. “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

— Anatole France

115. “Direction determines destination. So the question you must ask yourself is, ‘Are all the disciplines that I’m currently engaged in taking me where I want to go?’”

— Jim Rohn

116. “My pain may be the reason for somebody’s laugh. But my laugh must never be the reason for somebody’s pain.”

— Charlie Chaplin

117. “Be true to yourself. Make each day your masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.”

— John Wooden

118. “Change is inevitable. Change is constant.”

— Benjamin Disraeli

119. “They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.”

— Khalil Gibran

120. “In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.”

— Lao Tzu

121. “Happiness, wealth, and success are by-products of goal setting, they cannot be the goal themselves.”

— Denis Waitley

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

— Abraham Lincoln

123. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

— Abraham Lincoln

124. “Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?”

— Epicurus

125. “A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.”

— John C. Maxwell

126. “Wisdom is the daughter of experience.”

— Leonardo da Vinci

127. “Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.”

— Oprah Winfrey

128. “Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.”

— Richard P. Feynman

129. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

— Marcus Aurelius

130. “Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.”

— Benjamin Franklin

131. “There are two hundred million idiots, manipulated by a million intelligent men.”

— Pablo Escobar

132. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change, that lives within the means available and works co-operatively against common threats.”

— Charles Darwin

133. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly – they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.”

— Aldous Huxley

134. “Sapere aude. Dare to be wise.”

— Horace

135. “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

— Aldous Huxley

136. “You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

137. “The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.”

— Khalil Gibran

138. “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”

— Mark Twain

139. “Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn.”

— Benjamin Franklin

140. “Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.”

— William Arthur Ward

141. “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

— Derek Bok

142. “To stand up straight with your shoulders back is to accept the terrible responsibility of life, with eyes wide open. It means deciding to voluntarily transform the chaos of potential into the realities of habitable order.”

— Jordan B. Peterson

143. “Sometimes the most brilliant and intelligent minds do not shine in standardized tests because they do not have standardized minds.”

— Diane Ravitch

144. “Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try. For one thing we know beyond all doubt: nothing has ever been achieved by the person who says: it can’t be done.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

145. “To see what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”

— Confucius

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

— Alan Turing

147. “The quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life.”

— A. R. Bernard

148. “Books are the mirrors of the soul.”

— Virginia Woolf

149. “The kinder and more intelligent a person is, the more kindness he can find in other people. Kindness enriches our life; with kindness mysterious things become clear, difficult things become easy and dull things become cheerful.”

— Leo Tolstoy

150. “I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.”

— Jim Morrison