Intellectual Excellence Quotes

Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor understand the thinking of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the second is excellent, and the third is worthless.

I never felt that I had the natural intellectual gifts that the people who graduate first in their class from Harvard Law had.

My theory of self-made men is, then, simply this; that they are men of work. Whether or not such men have acquired material, moral or intellectual excellence, honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued, is the best, if not the only, explanation of their success... All human experience proves over and over again, that any success which comes through meanness, trickery, fraud and dishonour, is but emptiness and will only be a torment to its possessor.

Nowhere in the Gospels is intelligence praised as a virtue.

Anyone can win the Nobel Prize if the scientist works hard on his research subject.

None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance.

I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

In the world of thought a man’s rank is determined, not by his average work, but by his highest achievement.

There are just two things you can do to win a Nobel prize - have a good idea and pursue it effectively.

Together, people with good hearts and fine minds can move the world.

From the beginning of the Radiation Laboratory, I have had the rare good fortune of being in the center of a group of men of high ability, enthusiastic and completely devoted to scientific pursuits.

The desire of excellence is the necessary attribute of those who excel. We work little for a thing unless we wish for it. But we cannot of ourselves estimate the degree of our success in what we strive for; that task is left to others. With the desire for excellence comes, therefore, the desire for approbation. And this distinguishes intellectual excellence from moral excellence; for the latter has no necessity of human tribunal; it is more inclined to shrink from the public than to invite the public to be its judge.

The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object, and pursue it for life.

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

This ceremony and the intellectual aura associated with the Nobel Prizes have grown from the wisdom of a practical chemist who wrote a remarkable will.

Genius does not herd with genius.

Being at the top of your game intellectually, philosophically, politically, is not a forever thing.

All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past.

But no work from a first rate mind is ever really second rate.

It's a great honor to be selected as one of 'Foreign Policy''s Leading Global Thinkers for 2013.