Quotes & Sayings About Intelligence And Arrogance

Kindness is strength. Good-nature is often mistaken for virtue, and good health sometimes passes for genius. Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, every one should be serene, slow-pulsed, and calm. Intelligence is not the foundation of arrogance. Insolence is not logic. Epithets are the arguments of malice. — Robert G. Ingersoll

From long experience she knew that she wore her loneliness like armor. Very few people ever recognized it for what it was. To the casual observer it looked very much like arrogance. Sometimes it was. — Nevada Barr

True power does not need arrogance, a long beard and a barking voice. True power strangles you with silk ribbons, charm, and intelligence — Slavoj Zizek

I think the doubts are good in life. The people who don't have doubts I think only two things: arrogance or not intelligence. — Rafael Nadal

Politics doesn't require talent, intelligence, or good looks. Truly, someone like Donald Rumsfeld, a mediocre government functionary with no discernible talent, intelligence, or charm, is a greater international celebrity than Mick Jagger. Rumsfeld, despite being a has-been, is known in every corner of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa for his insanity and arrogance, while Jagger is admired by a mere couple hundred million music enthusiasts, huddled mostly in the First World. — Ian F. Svenonius

Intelligence people are no different from anybody else. They have preconceptions, and when they see them in real life, it reinforces how brilliant they think they are. — Tom Clancy

To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony. — Richard Leakey

The oppressed peoples of the earth are not objects for the exquisite turmoil of European consciences. They are subjects from which to learn how to exercise political intelligence and action. Obviously, colonial arrogance is a long time dying. — Alain Badiou

Butchers enjoy the mindless
chewing of lambs. Likewise the appetites work for a shadow king. Do the
soul work instead. Feed daily on wisdom. Expand your heart. Rest the appetites. They
are bandits on the road. They stop your spirit and steal valuables. The most vital
thing about you is your soul intelligence. The rest is a mask for that. Don't
lose touch with it. Sensual wantings sometimes block and blur that intelligence as
surely as wine or hashish can. Arrogance too is drunken, making you
think things true that aren't. — Rumi

Before I met the Jesuits, I'd never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics. — Pat Conroy

As an orangutan cannot embrace higher mathematics or comprehend the architecture and operation of a computer, we humans so good at loudly proclaiming our intelligence and applauding our own doltish displays of cerebral gymnastics cannot begin to understand the true structure and functioning of the Universe. — John Rachel

The only thing more dangerous than ignorance is the pretense of intelligent ignorance. The former is teachable; the latter is not. — Criss Jami

Among some people arrogance supplies the place of grandeur, inhumanity of decision, and roguery of intelligence. — Jean De La Bruyere

It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past — Ken Burns

The worship of reason is arrogance and betrays a lack of intelligence. The rejection of reason is cowardice and betrays a lack of faith. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

I had long since insisted upon interpreting the things that Fate forced me to do as victories of my own will and intelligence, and now this bad habit had grown into a sort of frenzied arrogance. In the nature of what I was calling my intelligence there was a touch of something illegitimate, a touch of the sham pretender who has been placed on the throne by some freak chance. This dolt of a usurper could not foresee the revenge that would inevitably be wreaked upon his stupid despotism. — Yukio Mishima

The vanity of intelligence is that the intelligent man is often more committed to 'one-upping' his opponent than being truthful. When the idea of intelligence, rather than intelligence itself, becomes a staple, there is no wisdom in it. — Criss Jami

Despite our very recent appearance on the planet, humanity combines arrogance with increasing material demands, even as we become more numerous. Our toughness is a delusion. Have we the intelligence and discipline to vigilantly guard against our tendency to grow without limit? — Lynn Margulis

Intelligence is the unlimited ability to conceive of concepts, and arrogance is the belief that one "knows" anything. — Monk E. Mind

Never mistake arrogance for intellect. — D.B. Harrop

It is not that men become too intelligent for God,' says the Apologist, 'but rather they become too arrogant for intelligence. — Criss Jami

Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!' Is it not so? — H. Rider Haggard

Intelligence is derived from two words - inter and legere - inter meaning 'between' and legere meaning 'to choose'. An intelligent person, therefore, is one who has learned 'to choose between'. He knows that good is better than evil, that confidence should supersede fear, that love is superior to hate, that gentleness is better than cruelty, forbearance than intolerance, compassion than arrogance, and that truth has more virtue than ignorance. — J. Martin Klotsche