Quotes on intelligence

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

Millions of dollars' worth of advertising shows such little respect for the reader's intelligence that it amounts almost to outright insult.

Author: James Adams

In view of the fact that God limited the intelligence of man, it seems unfair that He did not also limit his stupidity.

Author: Konrad Adenauer

Intelligence is a moral category.

Author: Theodor Adorno

The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there's some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there's a lot of work that's gone into it, so it can't all be just a lie.

Author: Damon Albarn

Man is made or unmade by himself. By the right choice he ascends. As a being of power, intelligence, and love, and the lord of his own thoughts, he holds the key to every situation.

Author: James Allen

The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are.

Author: Aldrich Ames

There are so many things a large intelligence espionage organization can do to justify its existence, that people can get promotions for, because it could result in results.

Author: Aldrich Ames

We had periodic crises in this country when the technical intelligence didn't support the policy. We had the bomber gap, the missile gap.

Author: Aldrich Ames

Our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.

Author: Aldrich Ames

Foreign Ministry guys don't become agents. Party officials, the Foreign Ministry nerds, tend not to volunteer to Western intelligence agencies.

Author: Aldrich Ames

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.

Author: Aldrich Ames

In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

Author: Aldrich Ames

Man becomes man only by his intelligence, but he is man only by his heart.

Author: Henri Amiel

The Queen's intelligence network is a hell of a lot better than anyone's in this palace. Bar none. She knows everything. I don't know how she does it. And she sees everything.

Author: Prince Andrew

Men create real miracles when they use their God-given courage and intelligence.

Author: Jean Anouilh

Intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.

Author: Julian Assange

Our bodies are shaped to bear children, and our lives are a working out of the processes of creation. All our ambitions and intelligence are beside that great elemental point.

Author: Saint Augustine

She saw too that man has the power of exceeding himself, of becoming himself more entirely and profoundly than he is, truths which have only recently begun to be seen in Europe and seem even now too great for its common intelligence.

Author: Sri Aurobindo

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

Author: Mikhail Bakunin

For passion, be it observed, brings insight with it; it can give a sort of intelligence to simpletons, fools, and idiots, especially during youth.

Author: Honore Balzac

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Author: George Bancroft

Ron Howard is as good a person as you could want to work with on film. He never lost his cool. He's the most easygoing, lovely man, but he's got this enormous intelligence and a wonderful humanity.

Author: Christine Baranski

It is difficult, if not impossible, to argue that laws written in the 1970s are adequate for today's intelligence challenges.

Author: Bob Barr

For four years, I listened to stories of intelligence failures, and it wasn't due to incompetence of anyone in the system, but that the system is so arcane.

Author: Charles Bass

The Intelligence Committee will also examine present counterintelligence programs for the Department of Energy, the National Laboratories, and the Department of Defense.

Author: Charles Bass

As a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, I will be participating in several hearings on the startling revelations contained in the report.

Author: Charles Bass

I am not a member of the CIA or any other intelligence agency.

Author: James Bath

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.

Author: Jean Baudrillard

Poets are the sense, philosophers the intelligence of humanity.

Author: Samuel Beckett

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

Author: Catharine Beecher

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

Author: Saul Bellow

We regard intelligence as man's main characteristic and we know that there is no superiority which intelligence cannot confer on us, no inferiority for which it cannot compensate.

Author: Henri Bergson

Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even constructing organized instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganized instruments.

Author: Henri Bergson

Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.

Author: Henri Bergson

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

Author: Ambrose Bierce

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

Author: Josh Billings

The plan we developed to deal with al Qaeda depended on developing sources of human and technical intelligence that could give us insights into his plans at the tactical level. This is easy to say but hard to accomplish.

Author: Cofer Black

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.

Author: Cofer Black

We worked to develop our own operations to advance U.S. counterterrorism objectives by penetrating terrorist safe havens and collecting intelligence that would inform policy and enable our own operations.

Author: Cofer Black

Mr. Speaker, we are a blessed Nation. We have not suffered another attack on our soil since September 11, and we are grateful. We have killed or captured dozens of members of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Our military and intelligence forces are working both hard and smart.

Author: Marsha Blackburn

Judy, we think that since the 11th of September, 2001, we've faced a similar heightened threat level. And we've been enhancing both the exchange of intelligence and security information and the assessment of that information, because that's the crucial element.

Author: David Blunkett

The National Intelligence Director needs the authority to do the job we are asking him to do. That means power over the intelligence budget. And to be effective, to be allowed to do his or her job, they must have authority over the budget.

Author: Leonard Boswell

The 9/11 Commission strongly recommends that the National Intelligence Director be fully in control of the budget, from developing it to implementing it, to ensuring that the National Intelligence Director has the clout to make decisions.

Author: Leonard Boswell

It's the continuation of everyone's childhood to see these young children who grow up full of life, full of intelligence, full of a sense of wonder. And within an instant they're gone from this world. It's terrible.

Author: Lucien Bouchard

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good.

Author: Bertolt Brecht

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

Author: Paul Bremer

My success was not based so much on any great intelligence but on great common sense.

Author: Helen Brown

In reality, serial killers are of average intelligence.

Author: Pat Brown

The E.U. has moved to combat global terrorism by instituting common European arrest and evidence warrants and creating a joint situation center to pool and analyze intelligence.

Author: John Bruton

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.

Author: William Buckley, Jr.

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.

Author: William Buckley, Jr.

I think the sexiest thing on anybody is intelligence. I respect somebody who has a brain and wants to use it more than a pretty face and status.

Author: Sophia Bush

I'm every bourgeois nightmare - a Cockney with intelligence and a million dollars.

Author: Michael Caine

There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.

Author: John Calvin

One is to ensure that the war fighters and the intelligence analysts get the information that they need when they need it, in a format that's useful to them.

Author: Stephen Cambone

Over the course of two years, we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community, both defense and national.

Author: Stephen Cambone

We have been working hard to think about what our combined needs are going to be in the way of intelligence capabilities, not today but 15 to 20 years in the future.

Author: Stephen Cambone

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

Author: Albert Camus

Teaching man his relatively small sphere in the creation, it also encourages him by its lessons of the unity of Nature and shows him that his power of comprehension allies him with the great intelligence over-reaching all.

Author: Annie Cannon

Our men and women in uniform deserve the best intelligence possible to help them protect America.

Author: Chris Cannon

Rehearsals and this band are two words that don't really go together, kinda like Military Intelligence.

Author: Jerry Cantrell

Policymakers have to make judgments based on the best intelligence they get.

Author: Frank Carlucci

My understanding is that what was provided was general order of battle information, not operational intelligence. I certainly have no knowledge of US participation in preparing battle and strike packages and doubt strongly that that occurred.

Author: Frank Carlucci

Intelligence is not a science.

Author: Frank Carlucci

I can remember when I was National Security Adviser, the intelligence community told us... they put out an intelligence report saying that Iran would never back off from attacks on shipping in the Gulf if we use force.

Author: Frank Carlucci

And I argued with that intelligence estimate and I think it is a responsibility of policymakers to use their best judgment on the basis of the intelligence they've received.

Author: Frank Carlucci

I have met with some of them - very honest fellows, who, with all their stupidity, had a kind of intelligence and an upright good sense, which cannot be the characteristics of fools.

Author: Giacomo Casanova

All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.

Author: Willa Cather

I can tell you that the Canadian intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been providing outstanding co-operation with our intelligence and law enforcement agencies as we work together to track down terrorists here in North America and put them out of commission.

Author: Paul Cellucci

These are Canadian and United States intelligence and law enforcement offices who are working in teams and who are using good intelligence and good law enforcement to really stop the criminals and terrorists before they ever get to the border.

Author: Paul Cellucci

The security of the United States, which is so dependent on having accurate and timely intelligence, is not a Republican or a Democratic issue.

Author: Saxby Chambliss

Intelligence is our first line of defense against terrorism, and we must improve the collection capabilities and analysis of intelligence to protect the security of the United States and its allies.

Author: Saxby Chambliss

Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising agency.

Author: Raymond Chandler

Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.

Author: Raymond Chandler

God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.

Author: William Channing

We've done it in intelligence sharing and certain elements of security. There were parts of the department, in fact, that worked very well in Katrina, like the Coast Guard and TSA.

Author: Michael Chertoff

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Author: Gilbert Chesterton

Legislation passed in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 enhanced our intelligence capabilities and strengthened our national defense, but until now our nation's immigration policies have not adapted to the needs of a post-September 11th world.

Author: Chris Chocola

The PATRIOT Act brought down the wall separating intelligence agencies from law enforcement and other entities charged with protecting the Nation from terrorism.

Author: Chris Chocola

I don't want to talk about intelligence matters. I will say, however, that intelligence-community estimates should not become public in the way of this city and in the way of Congress.

Author: Warren Christopher

The United States has done more for the war crimes tribunal than any other country in the world. We're turning over all the information we have, including intelligence information.

Author: Warren Christopher

Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential.

Author: Winston Churchill

Intelligence recognizes what has happened. Genius recognizes what will happen.

Author: John Ciardi

Intelligence flourishes only in the ages when belief withers.

Author: Emile Cioran

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

Author: Arthur Clarke

Intelligence is nothing without delight.

Author: Paul Claudel

Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.

Author: Karl Clausewitz

God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.

Author: James Clavell

In the aftermath of September 11, and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates, it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should.

Author: Hillary Clinton

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.

Author: Christopher Columbus

It is not difficult for me to have this faith, for it is incontrovertible that where there is a plan there is intelligence - an orderly, unfolding universe testifies to the truth of the most majestic statement ever uttered - 'In the beginning, God.'

Author: Arthur Compton

Truth knows no color; it appeals to intelligence.

Author: James Cone

Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.

Author: Alistair Cooke

The intelligence investigation under the leadership of Senator Church, which I know has helped cause this investigation by you, points out that the agencies did not disclose certain facts to us and that certain plots were going on.

Author: John Cooper

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

Author: Jacques Cousteau

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

Author: Quentin Crisp

Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

Author: e. cummings

If an animal does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Author: Will Cuppy

If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.

Author: Will Cuppy

Reputation is favorable notoriety as distinguished from fame, which is permanent approval of great deeds and noble thoughts by the best intelligence of mankind.

Author: George Curtis

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

Author: Salvador Dali

Artificial Intelligence leaves no doubt that it wants its audiences to enter a realm of pure fantasy when it identifies one of the last remaining islands of civilization as New Jersey.

Author: Godfried Danneels

I do not want to go into its physical reasons: the construction of the human body is different from that of carnivorous animals. But man's intelligence is such that it can be utilised to defend any-thing he does, whether right or wrong.

Author: Morarji Desai

We are constantly protecting the male ego, and it's a disservice to men. If a man has any sensitivity or intelligence, he wants to get the straight scoop from his girlfriend.

Author: Betty Dodson

Well, it's a - I don't want to disappoint you, but it's a time worn tradition of Australian Governments over many years not to get into any discussion about that aspect of intelligence matters.

Author: Alexander Downer

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

Author: Andrea Dworkin

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.

Author: Wayne Dyer

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

Author: Freeman Dyson

I think what he's - what he believes, and he may be correct, I don't know, that we have some intelligence information that leads us to know some things about what's going on in Iraq that we haven't revealed to others.

Author: Lawrence Eagleburger

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists - proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.

Author: Thomas Edison

If men can develop weapons that are so terrifying as to make the thought of global war include almost a sentence for suicide, you would think that man's intelligence and his comprehension... would include also his ability to find a peaceful solution.

Author: Dwight Eisenhower

People have taught me not to look for intelligence in rockmusic.

Author: Andrew Eldritch

Bill Gates wants people to think he's Edison, when he's really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn't right... wealth isn't the same thing as intelligence.

Author: Larry Ellison

I did my military service from 1989 - 92 and I was never shot at or had to fire on anybody. I was very lucky. I was more involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence.

Author: Oded Fehr

They have involved co-operation between the Iraqi intelligence and al-Qaeda operatives on training and combined operations regarding bomb making and chemical and biological weapons.

Author: Douglas Feith

We now witness the constructive work on a foundation that will endure through the ages. That foundation is the god of science - revealed to us in terms that will harmonize with our intelligence.

Author: John Fiske

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Author: F. Fitzgerald

It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.

Author: F. Fitzgerald

And I understand that, I testified in closed hearings over eight years because there are intelligence matters, there are sensitive matters that should not be held in a public hearing.

Author: Louis Freeh

Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time.

Author: Louis Freeh

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

Author: Sigmund Freud

Wealth, in even the most improbable cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence.

Author: John Galbraith

But once you are in that field, emotional intelligence emerges as a much stronger predictor of who will be most successful, because it is how we handle ourselves in our relationships that determines how well we do once we are in a given job.

Author: Daniel Goleman

We live less and less, and we learn more and more. Sensibility is surrendering to intelligence.

Author: Remy Gourmont

Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity.

Author: Remy Gourmont

This president has been reluctant to hold anybody accountable. No one was held accountable after September the 11th. Nobody's been held accountable after the clear flaws in intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.

Author: Bob Graham

We need to make a greater investment in human intelligence.

Author: Bob Graham

We ought to recognize that we have an offensive responsibility to take the war to the terrorists where they are. That responsibility has waned in the last year as military and intelligence resources were withdrawn from Afghanistan and Pakistan to be used in Iraq.

Author: Bob Graham

I have had national security background, 10 years on the Intelligence Committee, the last two years as chair.

Author: Bob Graham

During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

Author: Bob Graham

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

Author: Antonio Gramsci

Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?

Author: Andrew Greeley

That U.N. Security Council resolution requires getting Syrian troops and intelligence officials out of Lebanon so that the Lebanese can have elections here this spring that are free and fair and free of outside influence.

Author: Stephen Hadley

You'll remember Dr. Rice said that several times: It was not a warning about the place and the method and the time - it was a general warning. And that points out the imperfection, if you would, of our intelligence.

Author: Lee Hamilton

It becomes a giant's task to compute the result when the effect of cross seas, wind at all angles and ever varying force, arched surfaces, head resistance, ratio of weight to area, and the intelligence of the guiding power crop up.

Author: Lawrence Hargrave

I never threatened him and no Syrian intelligence officer has ever pointed a gun to his head.

Author: Rafik Hariri

So, you know, I think that Democrats are being more successful in Congress and I'm really going to be proud of the role I will play tomorrow as ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee when this bill passes.

Author: Jane Harman

A lot of the things that we've been able to do in the last several years were Democratic ideas, including the structure for this new director of national intelligence.

Author: Jane Harman

The Committee's review of a series of intelligence shortcomings, to include intelligence prior to 9/11 and the pre-war intelligence on Iraq, clearly reveal how vital a diverse intelligence workforce is to our national security.

Author: Jane Harman

The higher the general average of intelligence, all things else being equal, the less the disposition to be meddlesome, critical, and overbearing.

Author: Paul Harris

To attempt to superimpose its views through the exercise of force, is seldom the part of intelligence; it is frequently the part of ignorance.

Author: Paul Harris

In the clashes between ignorance and intelligence, ignorance is generally the aggressor.

Author: Paul Harris

Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.

Author: Barbara Harrison

Since September 11th Congress has created the Department of Homeland Security, more than doubled the homeland security budget and implemented a bipartisan overhaul of our intelligence systems.

Author: Doc Hastings

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

Author: Stephen Hawking

Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.

Author: John Hayes

This also turned out to be negative, so there is no material in the Central Intelligence Agency, either in the records or in the mind of any of the individuals, that there was any contact had or even contemplated with him.

Author: Richard Helms