Advanced Search

Intelligence is what we use when we don't know what to do, when we have to grope rather than using a standard response.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.

To train ourselves in sagacity we should exercise our mental powers on those questions which have already been solved by others...

... the test of a first class mind is the ability to hold two opposing views in the head at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

Intelligence becomes an asset when some useful order is created out of free flowing brain power-that is, when it is given coherent form (a mailing list, a database, an agenda for a meeting, a description of process); when it is captured in a way that allows it to be described, shared and exploited; and when it can be deployed to do something that could not be done if it remained scattered around like coins in a gutter.Â…An intellectual asset is a formally codified piece of knowledge.

Information is not intelligence, and gathering information is not carrying out competitive intelligence. Many companies have mechanisms to accumulate large amounts of information; significantly fewer companies have mechanisms for conducting competitive intelligence.

Intelligence uses information as raw material, screening, sifting, sorting, verifying, analyzing, interpreting, and compiling it to create a useful output. And just as information is raw material for intelligence, intelligence is raw material for a higher-level process: decision-making

I think that most of our intelligence is based on pattern recognition. Human thinking is actually not very good at logical and analytical thinking. We are very good at recognizing patterns.

IQ does not separate the star from the average performer. Every job has an IQ hurdle that people have to jump over, but whether you jump it and just barely clear it or whether you jump it and clear it by 30 extra points doesn't seem to make a difference. People get mistakenly fixated on IQ as a predictor of success. There is data that says that when you look at the whole IQ range from zero to 180, that the better the IQ, the better the performance, but that's because you are looking at a wide range of people. Once you get into a certain profession, that's where the theory falls apart. Within professions - where you are talking about people who already have at least average, and more than likely above average IQs to start with - then IQ seems not to play a role.

Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.

Emotions such as happiness, sadness, anger, and fear refer to feelings that signal information about relationships. For example, happiness signals harmonious relationships, whereas fear signals being threatened. Intelligence refers to the capacity to carry out abstract reasoning, recognize patterns, and compare and contrast. Emotional intelligence, then, refers to the capacity to understand and explain emotions, on the one hand, and of emotions to enhance thought, on the other.

The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.

It’s not that I am so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

The GMAT is a surrogate of IQ because it measures analytic abilities. Getting in the 90th percentile positions you for a career platform that starts out at a very high level. But, everyone else on that career platform has similar cognitive aptitudes. There’s very little to distinguish you on an intellectual basis. The other aptitudes turn out to matter more for real-world success, because there was no selection pressure for them, and there’s more variation among your peers.