Eric Temple Bell Quotes

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

I've written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

People talk about human intelligence as the greatest adaptation in the history of the planet. It is an amazing and marvelous thing, but in evolutionary terms, it is as likely to do us in as to help us along.

We need to make a greater investment in human intelligence.

I don't think there was a thunderclap or a divine spark that suddenly made one species smart. You can see, in our ancestors, there was a gradual expansion of the brain; there was an expansion of the complexity of tools.

Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference.

Empty heads, cognitive science has taught us, learn nothing. The powerful cultural and personal flexibility of our species is owed at least in part to our starting off so well-informed; we are good learners because we know what to pay attention to and what questions are the right ones to ask.

Humans are an infant species, a mere 150,000 years old. But, armed with a massive brain, we've not only survived, we've used our wits to adapt to and flourish in habitats as varied as deserts, Arctic tundra, tropical rainforests, wetlands and high mountain ranges.

The most significant moment in the course of intellectual development, which gives birth to the purely human forms of practical and abstract intelligence, occurs when speech and practical activity, two previously completely independent lines of development, converge.

It is conceded by all that man is the very highest type of all living creatures on the earth. His intelligence is far superior to that of any other earthly being.

From the lowest animals of which we can affirm intelligence up to man this type of intellect is found.

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence.

We assume, to begin with, that the individual is at least as complex in his internal structure as the language is which he speaks - otherwise, how could he speak a language which is complex?

Human intelligence may not be the best trick nature has to offer.

When you think of intelligence, don't think of a college professor; think of human beings as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don't have human intelligence, you're not even in the game.

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man.

If the tongue had not been framed for articulation, man would still be a beast in the forest.

The acquisition of literacy is one of the most important epigenetic achievements of Homo sapiens. To our knowledge, no other species ever acquired it.

Fish aren't smart. It's not like they have advanced degrees.

Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.

The race that does not value trained intelligence is doomed.

Our intellect, our awareness, and our consciousness is the most powerful form of life on this planet.

Who are we? That is the big question. And essentially we are just an upright-walking, big-brained, super-intelligent ape.