Top 100 Human Intellect Quotes
#1. It is beyond the power of the human intellect to encompass all the causes of any phenomenon. But the impulse to search into causes is inherent in man's very nature.
Leo Tolstoy
#2. One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#3. The human intellect is the great truth-organ; realities, as they exist, are the subjects of its study; and knowledge is the result of its acquaintance with the things which it investigates.
Moses Harvey
#4. A sixth sense is a miraculous thing, which in itself suggests a supernatural order. The human intellect, however, for all its power and triumphs, is largely formed by this world and is therefore corruptible.
Dean Koontz
#6. The restriction of studies of human intellect and character to studies of conscious states was not without influence on a scientific studies of animal psychology.
Edward Thorndike
#7. Yakov Mikhailovich, as we have already said, believed fervently in the power of the human intellect. There are no insoluble problems, only incompetent problem solvers.
Boris Akunin
#8. The awful consciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined as it were with human intellect from top to bottom, and on all side round, may be perhaps be imagined but can not be described.
Sarah Siddons
#9. A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
Victor Hugo
#10. The tongue of man is powerful enough to render the ideas which the human intellect conceives; but in the realm of true and deep sentiments it is but a weak interpreter. These are inexpressible, like the endless glory of the Omnipotent.
Lajos Kossuth
#11. He alone knows to whom He will reveal Himself under which form. By what path and in what manner He attracts any particular man to Himself with great force is incomprehensible to the human intellect. The Path differs indeed for different pilgrims.
Anandamayi Ma
#12. The world needs the kind of education by means of which character is formed, strength of the mind is increased and the human intellect is expanded beyond its own limits.
Abhijit Naskar
#13. There is no doubt that human survival will continue to depend more and more on human intellect and technology. It is idle to argue whether this is good or bad. The point of no return was passed long ago, before anyone knew it was happening.
Theodosius Dobzhansky
#14. Because of our sacred regard for each human intellect, we consider the obtaining of an education to be a religious responsibility.
Russell M. Nelson
#15. Books, in all their variety, offer the human intellect the means whereby civilisation may be carried triumphantly forward.
Winston Churchill
#16. We seem to have lost our contact with the primordial: the idea of - call it divine revelation as opposed to something that's learned by the human intellect - something that, if you lay yourself completely open, and you just open your heart completely, something will actually come into it.
John Tavener
#17. But we are not dedicating or building any Capitol or Pyramid to human Pride, but found a holy temple in the human Intellect, on the model of the Universe ... For whatever is worthy of Existence is worthy of Knowledge-which is the Image (or Echo) of Existence.
Francis Bacon
#18. If the human intellect functions, it is actually in order to solve the problems which the man's inner destiny sets it.
Jose Ortega Y Gasset
#19. Human intellect is incurably abstract.
C.S. Lewis
#20. In all the disputes which have excited Christians against each other, Rome has invariably decided in favor of that opinion which tended most towards the suppression of the human intellect and the annihilation of the reasoning powers.
Voltaire
#21. The assumption is that the inevitability of a solution's realization is inherent in the interaction of human intellect and the constantly transformative evolution of physical universe.
R. Buckminster Fuller
#22. Man may think human intellect and reasoning are almighty, that the brain is able to comprehend all truths of the world; but the verdict of God's Word is, vanity of vanities.
Watchman Nee
#23. 'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.
Emma Goldman
#24. Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.
Christopher Hitchens
#25. To reflect on the essence of the Creator ... is forbidden to the human intellect because of the severance of all relation between the two existences.
Muhammad Abduh
#26. There have been times when only a hair's-breadth has intervened betwixt myself and the seething devil-ridden world of madness; for the hideous knowledge, the horror- blackened memories which I have carried so long, were never meant to be borne by the human intellect.
Clark Ashton Smith
#27. Love with delight discourses in my mindUpon my lady's admirable gifts ... Beyond the range of human intellect.
Dante Alighieri
#29. The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other.
John William Draper
#30. We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity.
William Butler Yeats
#31. General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#32. Zen is a double-edged sword, killing words and thoughts, yet at the same time, giving them life. Although beyond human intellect and philosophy, Zen is their root and source.
Masao Abe
#33. The Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions [than we can ever know]. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty.
Galileo Galilei
#34. The power of quotation is as dreadful a weapon as any which the human intellect can forge.
John Jay Chapman
#36. Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.
Che Guevara
#37. I have no reason to believe that the human intellect is able to weave a system of physics out of its own resources without experimental labor. Whenever the attempt had been made it has resulted in an unnatural and self-contradictory mass of rubbish.
Nancy Forbes
#38. Angels are able to know and understand better than the human intellect can, precisely because such knowledge and understanding comes to them by way of ideas infused in them by God ...
Mortimer Adler
#39. If a man will comprehend the richness and variety of the universe, and inspire his mind with a due measure of wonder and awe, he must contemplate the human intellect not only on its heights of genius but in its abysses of ineptitude ...
A.E. Housman
#40. Does the human intellect, or "reason," really spring us free from our inherence in the depths of this wild proliferation of forms? Or on the contrary, is the human intellect rooted in, and secretly borne by, our forgotten contact with the multiple nonhuman shapes that surround us on every hand?
David Abram
#41. What cannot be understood by the human intellect need not be feared because it ultimately comes from God
Devdutt Pattanaik
#42. The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.
Felix Adler
#43. misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect.
Alexandre Dumas
#44. Human intellect is natures attempt at self criticism
Muhammad Iqbal
#45. The whole body of the arts and sciences composes one vast machinery for the irritation and development of the human intellect.
Thomas De Quincey
#46. Faith in Qur'anic revelation unveils all the possibilities that lie before the human intellect.
Osman Bakar
#47. I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
#48. If the human intellect is allowed to impose a preconceived pattern on society, if our powers of reasoning are allowed to lay claim to a monopoly of creative effort ... then we must not be surprised if society, as such, ceases to function as a creative force.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#49. The human intellect owes its superiority over that of the lower animals in great measure to the stimulus which alcohol has given imagination.
Samuel Butler
#51. I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.
H.G.Wells
#52. The human intellect has not been able to conceive of anything more noble and sublime in the history of the world than the teachings of the Upanishads.
Sivananda
#53. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. - Let each man hope & believe what he can. -
Charles Darwin
#54. The whole idea of the pursuit of goods and possessions has completely corrupted the human experience, along with religion, which I think limits the intellect.
George Carlin
#55. It is the activity of the intellect that constitutes complete human happiness - provided it be granted a complete span of life, for nothing that belongs to happiness can be incomplete.
Aristotle.
#56. Human skin is porous; the world flows through you. Your senses are large pores that let the world in. By being attuned to the wisdom of your senses, you will never become an exile in your own life, an outsider lost in an external spiritual place that your will and intellect, have constructed.
John O'Donohue
#57. None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.
Lydia M. Child
#58. What is a Person? is a clear and comprehensive reconsideration of the meaning of human personhood as the central core of social structures. With breadth of intellect and balance of wisdom, Smith resets the frame of reflection for the most important discussions of the twenty-first century.
William B. Hurlbut
#59. The abilities distinctive of human beings are abilities of intellect and will. The relevant abilities of intellect are thought, imagination (the cogitative and creative imagination rather than the image-generating faculty), personal (experiential) and factual memory, reasoning and selfconsciousness.
P.M.S. Hacker
#60. While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And
Leo Tolstoy
#61. For those of us who have come to believe that unless we are thinking we are wasting time, it may be challenging to simply linger with a beautiful sunset, an exquisite painting, or an arresting piece of music. The intellect often reacts to the seductions of beauty by attempting to recapture us.
Carolyn Baker
#62. If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this Earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics. We must also believe that God gave us our human powers of intellect and reason.
Sheldon Whitehouse
#63. I think, as human beings, we at times overvalue the intellect and we undermine the body. I don't mean a body externally and the shape of a body. I mean the intelligence of a body, the memories that a body can store, how a body feels emotion, and how a body processes emotion.
Colin Farrell
#65. They are the humans who are intelligent enough to have insight of every single molecular underpinning of the warmth of love, and yet not let that factual knowledge ruin the romance in a relationship.
Abhijit Naskar
#66. The animal has its happiness in the senses, the human beings in their intellect, and the gods in spiritual contemplation. It is only to the soul that has attained to this contemplative state that the world really becomes beautiful.
Swami Vivekananda
#67. A superior brain without the saving essence of godliness may turn against the human race and drench the world in blood, or worse, it may loose ideas into the earth which will continue to curse mankind for centuries after it has turned to dust again.
A.W. Tozer
#68. Wherever the human mind is healthy and vigorous in all its proportions, great in imagination and emotion no less than in intellect, and not overborne by an undue or hardened pre-eminence of the mere reasoning faculties, there the grotesque will exist in full energy.
John Ruskin
#69. One of the primary services the arts can render to theology is their integrative power, their ability to interrelate the intellect with the other facets of our human makeup.
Jeremy Begbie
#70. How wonderful is the human voice! It is indeed the organ of the soul. The intellect of man is enthroned visibly on his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance, but the soul, the soul reveals itself in the voice only.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#71. It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.
Peter Ackroyd
#72. Scholars note that human reasoning is limited not only by imperfect information and innate intellectual capacities but also by the broader culture that subsequently shapes the very optics that individuals use to categorize the world.
Michael Barnett
#73. Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully.
John A. Lejeune
#74. Somehow our society has formed a one-sided view of the human personality, and for some reason everyone understood giftedness and talent only as it applied to the intellect. But it is possible not only to be talented in one's thoughts but also to be talented in one's feelings as well.
Lev Vygotsky
#75. An ID number is only there to 'identify' human beings. Use it to assume people's intellect or wisdom at your own risk.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#76. Theater publicly reveals the human condition through appealing to both intellect and emotion. Architecture, whether lowly or exalted, can do the same.
Hugh Hardy
#77. Human nature...is more powerfully acted on through imagination and sentiments than through intellect and reason.
Christine Kinealy
#78. God allows the wheat and the tares to grow up together, andthe tares frequently get the start of the wheat and kill it out. The only difference between the wheat and human beings is that the latter have intellect and ought to combine and pull out the tares, root and branch.
Susan B. Anthony
#79. Intellect needs to be understood not as some kind of claim against the other human excellences for which a fatally high price has to be paid, but rather as a complement to them without which they cannot be fully consummated.
Richard Hofstadter
#80. Every once in awhile the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by a noble work of the intellect.
Murray N. Rothbard
#81. Since the human mind is the primary weapon of the human being, it is also therefore the primary and most significant instrument of violence.
Bryant McGill
#82. I have damaged my intellect trying to imagine why a man should want to invent a repeating clock, and how another man could be found to lust after it and buy it. The man who can guess these riddles is far on the way to guess why the human race was invented - which is another riddle which tires me.
Mark Twain
#83. I think there can be a positive sort of futurism even in a presentist society. But I think it's a kind of futurism that envisions augmenting human ability and intellect rather than creating some artificial machine intelligence that displaces us.
Douglas Rushkoff
#85. If wine were to disappear from human production, I believe it would cause an absence, a failure in health and intellect, a void much more terrifying than all the recesses and the deviations for which wine is regarded as responsible.
Charles Baudelaire
#86. Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.
Edward Thorndike
#87. There is no difference between the worry of a human mother and an animal mother for their offspring. A mother's love does not derive from the intellect but from the emotions, in animals just as in humans.
Maimonides
#88. The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time
is he who shall create poems in stone.
Louis Sullivan
#89. But he who has been earnest in the love of knowledge and of true wisdom, and has exercised his intellect more than any other part of him, must have thoughts immortal and divine. If he attain truth, and in so far as human nature is capable of sharing in immortality, he must altogether be immortal.
Plato
#90. Not until the human heart is stolid to poetry, the human eye blind to beauty, not until the intellect ceases its quest for truth and conscience finds its quietus either in universal defeat or in triumphant success, will organized religion cease to be.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
#91. A human being has been given an intellect to make choices, and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed.
Mary Tyler Moore
#92. The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.
Sydney Smith
#93. If human beings were really progressive creatures, then all boys would be smarter, healthier, and, wealthier, than their grandfathers.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#94. Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.
Mahatma Gandhi
#95. We think of Euclid as of fine ice; we admire Newton as we admire the peak of Teneriffe. Even the intensest labors, the most remote triumphs of the abstract intellect, seem to carry us into a region different from our own-to be in a terra incognita of pure reasoning, to cast a chill on human glory.
Walter Bagehot
#96. A disease-free body, quiver-free breath, stress-free mind, inhibition-free intellect, obsession-free memory, ego that includes all, and soul which is free from sorrow is the birthright of every human being.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
#97. The intellect of most persons is harnessed by innumerable wants. Such a life is, from the spiritual point of view the lowest type of human existence. The highest type of human existence is free from all wants; and it is characterised by sufficiency or contentment.
Meher Baba
#98. I was convinced that all the answers to the dilemmas of human existence could be found through the intellect, that is to say, by thinking. I didn't realize yet that thinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence.
Eckhart Tolle
#99. One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.
Bertrand Russell
#100. Sometimes, humanity surprises me with all its lack of control over the primordial urges. These innate urges are the biological traits that make us similar to the rest of the animal kingdom. But the modern qualities that make us superior to all the animals are intellect and self-control.
Abhijit Naskar
