Quotes about Intelligence

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

“Ignorance is no excuse, it's the real thing.”

“Digital surveillance programs require concrete data centres; intelligence agencies are based in real buildings. Surveillance systems ultimately consist of technologies, people, and the vast network of material resources that supports them.”

“When a decision is made to go to war based on intelligence, it is a fateful decision. It has ramifications and impacts way beyond the current months and years.”

“I try to put all I am as a person into what I do. My intelligence, my emotion. I've done that in everything.”

“All different forms of human expression, art, science, are going to become expanded, by expanding our intelligence.”

“One of the functions of intelligence is to take account of the dangers that come from trusting solely to the intelligence.”

“Counterintelligence is, in effect, chasing ghosts, which is why the tools used to investigate foreign intelligence activity are secret, like human sources or electronic surveillance.”

“I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.”

“In Europe they call geeks 'smart people,' and frankly I think we live in a culture that doesn't value intelligence enough; so I am very proud in saying that I am a geek.”

“Being a unique superpower undermines the military intelligence of strategy. To think strategically, one has to imagine oneself in the enemy's place. If one cannot do this, it is impossible to foresee, to take by surprise, to outflank. Misinterpreting an enemy can lead to defeat. This is how empires fall.”

“It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.”

“There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.”

“What does 'politicizing intelligence' mean? Using intel, or more often, partial intel, to produce an effect in line with White House policies rather than giving a full picture of a particular situation.”

“An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.”

“It is an accepted commonplace in psychology that the spiritual level of people acting as a crowd is far lower than the mean of each individual's intelligence or morality.”

“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.”

“Americans have always had an ambivalent attitude toward intelligence. When they feel threatened, they want a lot of it, and when they don't, they regard the whole thing as somewhat immoral.”

“For me, a sexy man has three very important qualities: a great sense of humour, intelligence, and loyalty.”

“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.”

“There's a long history of artificial intelligence programs that try to mimic what the brain is doing, but they've all fallen short.”