Extremely Intelligent Quotes & Sayings

Cynicism is extremely contagious, and the most pious among us cannot long endure its potency. The gullible should be on their guard, however, since this endearing quality frequently masquerades as wit. — Mike Corbett

I think I'm very blessed to have been raised by so many intelligent and impressive women, and now continuing that on a professional level, having people like Sarah and Nadia to guide me through this new phase of my career, is extremely significant. — Zayn Malik

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In — Douglas Adams

You always have to compromise," Gene said. An incredible statement and totally untrue in his case. "You found the perfect wife. Highly intelligent, extremely beautiful, and she lets you have sex with other women." Gene suggested that I not congratulate Claudia in person for her tolerance, — Anonymous

But I feel like letting other people be good for me
after all, I'm just an unhappy little girl and even if I'm extremely intelligent, that doesn't change anything, does it? An unhappy little girl who, just when things are at their worst, has been lucky enough to meet some good people. Morally, do I have the right to let this chance go by? — Muriel Barbery

Miss Darracott, an intelligent girl, now perceived that in harboring for as much as an instant the notion of marrying a man who fell so lamentably short of the ideal lover she was an irreclaimable ninnyhammer. Ideal lovers might differ in certain respects, but in whatever mold they were cast, not one of them was so unhandsome as to make it extremely difficult for one not to giggle at their utterances. This hopelessly overgrown and unromantic idiot must be given a firm set-down. — Georgette Heyer

To be extremely happy but extremely intelligent is a task of being optimistic without being cheesy. — Criss Jami

Intelligence is an extremely subtle concept. It's a kind of understanding that flourishes if it's combined with a good memory, but exists anyway even in the absence of good memory. It's the ability to draw consequences from causes, to make correct inferences, to foresee what might be the result, to work out logical problems, to be reasonable, rational, to have the ability to understand the solution from perhaps insufficient information. You know when a person is intelligent, but you can be easily fooled if you are not yourself intelligent. — Isaac Asimov

The ideal girl ... would be kind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent, and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness to enable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself. — P.G. Wodehouse

She's commanding and loyal, doesn't suffer fools well or make small talk, demands loyalty, and is extremely intelligent. — Mimi Wolverton

Private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information. It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights. — Albert Einstein

The fact that someone is not particularly intelligent is no guide in these things. People may be stupid and extremely complicated just as they can be clever and incapable of deep feeling. — Julian Fellowes

Goats are extremely cute and fairly intelligent (for livestock) and, importantly, delicious. — Time-Life Books

I was brought up by two extremely intelligent people who gave me the greatest gift that man can give anyone, and that is freedom from fear. — Katharine Hepburn

Only the extremely ignorant or the extremely intelligent can resist change. — Socrates

Three weeks after our first date, I am thoroughly enjoying spending time with Natalia. She is intelligent, friendly, classy and extremely physical. I think we have had sex on every surface in my apartment. — Sadie Grubor

We Indians are an extremely intelligent people but we can progress as a nation only when we learn the secret of unleashing this positive power of the people. Whenever this happens it disturbs a lot of people - because they know that a giant is waking up. — Verghese Kurien

Let it not be a beautiful face,' I thought, 'but to make up for that, let it be a noble, an expressive, and, above all, an extremely intelligent one. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I'm not much for cats. I'm terrified of mice. I've worked a lot with elephants, and they are extremely intelligent and sensitive, and thankfully, they seem to like me. You never want to get on the bad side of an elephant. And never trust a chimp. — Mary Ellen Mark

I defy anyone to watch interviews with Ted Bundy and not be taken by him. He was very handsome and charming and extremely intelligent and, you know, that can exist. — Jamie Dornan

In response to a plea in early 1941 from his colleague and friend, the writer Marietta Shaginyan, who was newly infatuated with the Piano Quintet and its creator, Mickhail Zoshchenko drafted for her a portrait of the Shostakovich he knew, a deeply complex individual:
"It seemed to you that he is "frail, fragile, withdrawn, an infinitely direct, pure child." That is so. But if it were only so, then great art (as with him) would never be obtained. He is exactly what you say he is, plus something else - he is hard, acid, extremely intelligent, strong perhaps, despotic and not altogether good-natured (although cerebrally good-natured).
That is the combination in which he must be seen. And then it may be possible to understand his art to some degree.
In him, there are great contradictions. In him, one quality obliterates the other. It is conflict in the highest degree. It is almost a catastrophe."
Quoted in Laurel Fay: Shostakovich, a Life. — Dmitri Shostakovich

If the empire were to collapse, I should personally feel extremely sad. I absolutely do not believe that the personal rule of Napoleon III has been corrupting and oppressive for France-but quite the contrary, it is demonstrably necessary, conciliatory, progressive, and generally intelligent and democratic in the best sense of the word. — Franz Liszt

Andrei Yefimych is extremely fond of intelligence and honesty, but he lacks character and faith in his right to organize an intelligent and honest life around him. — Anton Chekhov

I told you not to confuse forgetfulness with stupidity," Allen said. "She's extremely intelligent. Did you use the audio binder? Give her the Amneoset? — Kim Harrison

I hated my face, for example, found it odious, and even suspected that there was some mean expression in it, and therefore every time I came to work I made a painful effort to carry myself as independently as possible, and to express as much nobility as possible with my face. "let it not be a beautiful face," I thought, "but, to make up for that, let it be a noble, an expressive, and, above all, an extremely intelligent one." Yet I knew, with certainty and suffering, that i would never be able to express all those perfections with the face I had. The most terrible thing was that I found it positively stupid. And I would have been quite satisfied with intelligence. Let's even say I would even have agreed to a mean expression, provided only that at the same time my face be found terribly intelligent. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was perhaps about 10 years old when a local farmer rang us up to say he had found a young badger and would we take it in. So we did; it was a female called Bessy and she lived in the boiler room. She was extremely intelligent, had a very low opinion of cats but loved the dogs. She was pretty well trained; she went in the car. — Owen Paterson

You know Karen, everybody thinks serial killers are ignorant, but we are actually extremely intelligent. — Mary Burton King

They're engineers," she said. She was thinking, What did he expect? He must have dealt with engineers at GM. "Emotionally, they're all thirteen years old, stuck at the age just before boys stop playing with toys, because they've discovered girls. They're all still playing with toys. They have poor social skills, dress badly - but they're extremely intelligent and well trained, and they are very arrogant in their way. Outsiders are definitely not allowed to play. — Michael Crichton

Hire extremely independent, intelligent, and passionate people, not necessarily "experts." Maybe three or four of my employees have MBAs, and those guys aren't necessarily at the top of the food chain. — Yvon Chouinard

The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn't do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood. — Eugene Jarecki

I suspect gentlemen, that you're regarding me with pity; you keep repeating to me that an enlightened and cultured man
such as, in short, as the man of the future will be
cannot knowingly desire anything unprofitable for himself
that that's mathematics. I agree totally that it really is mathematics. But I repeat to you for the hundredth time: there is only one case, only one, when a man can intentionally and consciously desire for himself even what is harmful and stupid, even what is extremely stupid: namely, in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is extremely stupid and not be constrained by the obligation to desire for himself only what is intelligent. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The woman who is not pursued sets up the doctrine that pursuit is offensive to her sex, and wants to make it a felony. No genuinely attractive woman has any such desire. She likes masculine admiration, however violently expressed, and is quite able to take care of herself. More, she is well aware that very few men are bold enough to offer it without a plain invitation, and this awareness makes her extremely cynical of all women who complain of being harassed, beset, storied, and seduced. All the more intelligent women that I know, indeed, are unanimously of the opinion that no girl in her right senses has ever been actually seduced since the world began; — H.L. Mencken

When I was in power, I found that experts can't be trusted. For this simple reason: unlike tyrants, they are under no delusion that a country, a people is their body. Under this delusion a tyrant takes everything personally. An expert takes nothing personally. Nothing is ever precisely his fault. If a bridge collapses, or a war miscarries, he has already walked away. He still has his expertise. Also,
people imagine that because a thing is big, it has had a great deal of intelligent thought given to it. This is not true. A big idea is even more apt to be wrong than a small one, because the scale is inorganic. The Great Wall, for instance, is extremely stupid. The two biggest phenomena in the world right now are Maoism and American television, and both are extremely stupid. — John Updike

I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together. — Stanley Crouch

The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I hadn't gone two steps when his voice caught me squarely in the eardrum.
'You will find Mr Wooster', he was saying to the substitue chappie, 'an extremely pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible - quite negligible'.
Well, I mean to say. What!
I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubht whether it is humanly possible to tick Jeeves off. — P.G. Wodehouse

I think that almost every scene was an exploration - it was never going to be just what's on the page. So I know I was very lucky - we all were - to work with a cast of this caliber. These are extremely experienced and intelligent actors, who are also deeply emotional and - as you say - are also engaged in the world. — Oren Moverman

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. — Madison Smartt Bell

Not only do I think that he is highly intelligent but also outstandingly educated ... He is extremely beautiful, fragile and totally unearthly. I always had the feeling that he is not standing on the floor but slightly floating on air. Michael Jackson knows that he appears like that on others and he also knows how to employ it. — Gottfried Helnwein

In this world, man has two significant possessions: intelligence and emotion. These two possessions govern our day-to-day life. But very often we see that emotion (ego) gets the upper hand in our life. We know that even if someone is extremely intelligent, when his emotion comes to the fore it will devour him. He is compelled to do what his emotion asks him to do. — Sri Chinmoy

Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns out to be eventually self-defeating. Cleverness divides; intelligence includes. — Eckhart Tolle