Intelligence

Only the genius or unsung hero can make an intellectual judgment when his feelings, emotions and beliefs are engaged.
~ William Bennett (W.B.) Bean, in Archives of Internal Medicine; 117: 1-3 (Jan. 1966). Bring out your dead

Cultivate an intellectual habit of subordinating one's opinions and wishes to objective evidence and a reverence for things as they really are.
~ William Ian Beardmore (W.I.B.) Beveridge, The Art of Scientific Investigation (1950).

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., from On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures (1989).

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so.
~ William F. Buckley, Jr., in National Review (19 November 1955). Publishers Statement

Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies.
~ Bill Bulko

In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in dreary boredom. Make no mistake; all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.
~ William S. Burroughs, Yage Letters (1963)

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.
~ William Colby, quoted in Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don't Want You to See (2000).

My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
~ Billy Connolly

Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity.
~ Bill Cosby, in Himself (1983 album).

If an animal does something, they call it instinct. If we do exactly the same thing for the same reason, they call it intelligence.
~ Will (William Jacob) Cuppy, in How To Get From January To December (1951).

Intelligent Design begins with the observation that intelligent causes can do things which undirected natural causes cannot.
~ William A. Dembski, from Cosmic Pursuit (Spring 1998). The Intelligent Design Movement

The charge that intelligent design spells the end of science and rationality is without merit. If anything, the very comprehensibility of the world points to an intelligence behind the world. Indeed, science would be impossible if our intelligence were not adapted to the intelligibility of the world. The match between our intelligence and the intelligibility of the world is no accident.
~ William A. Dembski, The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (2004). Preface

The world is a mirror representing the divine life. The mechanical philosophy was ever blind to this fact. Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.
~ William A. Dembski, in Touchstone Magazine (July/August 1999).

Undirected natural causes can place scrabble pieces on a board, but cannot arrange the pieces as meaningful words or sentences. To obtain a meaningful arrangement requires an intelligent cause.
~ William A. Dembski, from Cosmic Pursuit (Spring 1998). The Intelligent Design Movement

Religion is the last subject that the intellect begins to understand.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume VI (1957). The Reformation

Thou living ray of intellectual fire.
~ William Falconer, The Shipwreck (1762). Canto I

[T]he term intellect includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge; as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, etc.
~ William Fleming, The Vocabulary of Philosophy, Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical (1856).

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence. All the neurons in the brain that make up perceptions and emotions operate in a binary fashion. We can someday replicate that on a machine.
~ Bill Gates, in Time Magazine (13 January 1997). In Search of the Real Bill Gates

If you rely too much on people in other companies and countries ... you are outsourcing your brains, where you are making all the innovation.
~ Bill Gates, Speech at the Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), Tokyo, Japan (29 June 2005).

Intellectual property has the shelf life of a banana.
~ Bill Gates

[Smart] is an elusive concept. There's a certain sharpness, an ability to absorb new facts. ... To ask an insightful question. To absorb it in real time. A capacity to remember. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective.
~ Bill Gates, Interview in Playboy Magazine (July 1994).

I am an intellectual chap,
And think of things that would astonish you.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Iolanthe (1882 opera). Act II

[I]ndividuality is of the very essence of intellectual excellence.
~ William Godwin, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). Book VIII: Of Property

The labour of the intellect of man is endless.
~ William Godwin, Thoughts on Man, His Nature, Productions and Discoveries (1831). Essay IV. Of the Durability of Human Achievements and Productions

I would employ the word noetic ... to express all those cognitions which originate in the mind itself.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Volume I. Metaphysics. Lecture XXXVIII. The Regulative Faculty

[T]o view attention as a special act of intelligence, and to distinguish it from consciousness, is utterly inept.
~ Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet, in Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic (1858-60). Volume I. Metaphysics. Lecture XIII. Consciousness, Its Special Conditions

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.
~ Stephen William Hawking

Socialism is so plain, so clear, so simple that when a person becomes intellectual he doesn't understand socialism.
~ William D. "Big Bill" Haywood (speech at Cooper Union; January 1912), in the International Socialist Review (February 1912).

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as remembering.
~ William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course (1893).

"Intellectualism" is the belief that our mind comes upon a world complete in itself, and has the duty of ascertaining its contents; but has no power of re-determining its character, for that is already given.
~ William James, Faith and the Right to Belief (undated manuscript).

No one of us ought to issue vetoes to the other, nor should we bandy words of abuse. We ought, on the contrary, delicately and profoundly to respect one another's mental freedom:.
~ William James, An Address to the Philosophical Clubs of Yale and Brown Universities (published in the New World; June 1896). The Will to Believe

We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lecture XVIII: Philosophy

What if she figures out you're not very smart?
~ Billy Joel, in The Bridge (1986 album). Modern Woman

Make it a point not to let your intellectual life atrophy through non-use. Be familiar with the classics of English literature in prose and verse; read the lives of the great men of the past, and keep pace with modern thought in books of travel, history, fiction, science.
~ William Williams Keen, in JAMA 34:1592-4 (1900).

The time of man's playing with wit, and abilities, and of fancying himself to be something great and considerable in the intellectual world, may be much shorter, but can be no longer, than he can eat and drink with the animals of this world.
~ William Law, An Humble, Earnest, And Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761).

Today the world is the victim of propaganda because people are not intellectually competent. More than anything the United States needs effective citizens competent to do their own thinking.
~ William Mather Lewis

A good author possesses not only his own intellect, but also that of his friends.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Intuitive cognition of a thing is cognition that enables us to know whether the thing exists or does not exist, in such a way that, if the thing exists, then the intellect immediately judges that it exists and evidently knows that it exists, unless the judgment happens to be impeded through the imperfection of this cognition.
~ William of Occam

One of the secrets of life is to keep our intellectual curiosity acute.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps

The problems used in AI research have often been puzzles or games. These are simpler and more clearly defined than the complex problems of the real world. They too involve the elements of logic, insight, and intuition that pertain to real problems. Many of the people at Microsoft follow AI work closely, of course, and this may help to explain what must strike some readers as peculiar -- their supreme confidence that silly little puzzles have a bearing on the real world.
~ William Poundstone, How Would You Move Mount Fuji? Microsoft's Cult of the Puzzle -- How the World's Smartest Company Selects the Most Creative Thinkers (May 2003).

If we look into ourselves, we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible, we should find them tailed.
~ W. (William) Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man (1872). Chapter III: Liberty

In human affairs, every thing is permanent in proportion as it is connected with intellect.
~ William Roscoe, from The Works of Alexander Pope (1824). Preface

When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states.
~ Will Rogers

[H]e has not so much brain as ear-wax.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida. Act V, scene i

I know a hawk from a handsaw.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act II, scene ii

I know a trick worth two of that.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I. Act II, scene i

Say from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting?
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act I, scene iii

Intelligence is a general capacity of an individual consciously to adjust his thinking to new requirements; it is general mental adaptability to new problems and conditions of life.
~ William Stern (Wilhelm Louis Stern), The Psychological Methods of Intelligence Testing (1912). Introduction: Nature and Problem of Intelligence Testing

Love is a higher intellectual exercise than hatred.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, in The Works of William Makepeace Thackeray, in Thirteen Volumes, Volume XII (1899). Introduction

Help conquer the IQ shortage: worry less and think more.
~ Robert Anton Wilson, The Illuminati Papers (1980).

Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.
~ Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising (1983).

A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,
An intellectual All-in-all!
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems of Sentiment and Reflection (1800). A Poet's Epitaph (1799)

Have not we too? -- yes, we have
Answers, and we know not whence;
Echoes from beyond the grave,
Recognised intelligence!
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume II (1807). Yes! Full Surely 'Twas The Echo (written in 1806)

The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on a dim and perilous way!
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book III: Despondency

[I]ntelligence test scores and marks in school are not always true indicators of the worth of a student, nor even the power of his intellect.
~ Eugene S. Wilson, quoted in The Alcalde magazine (September 1961). Editorial: The Case for the C-Average Student

The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933). The Choice