My biggest turn-on has to be brains, intelligence.

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.

That penetrating gaze, that intelligence; it's hard not to be anthropomorphic when you're looking at a great ape - at any primate - but especially with gorillas. They're just so magnificent.

One of my first paid gigs was writing psychology quizzes for 'YM,' a monthly teen magazine like 'Seventeen.'

There is a lot of strength and intelligence in Hollywood.

He was just trying to tease me - I knew that later - but he said he'd have to leave because it wasn't fair to have anyone in the room who was going to make fun of what he had to say. He had a good sense of humor, really.

Only in your imagination can you revise.

I don't underestimate audiences' intelligence. Audiences are much brighter than media gives them credit for. When people went to a movie once a week in the 1930s and that was their only exposure to media, you were required to do a different grammar.

Iron sharpens iron; scholar, the scholar.

Not all intelligence can be artificial now, so if we make a mistake, the consequences are no longer simply located within an institution or a national culture.

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.

One way to find food for thought is to use the fork in the road, the bifurcation that marks the place of emergence in which a new line of development begins to branch off.

I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.

Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything.

I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've always said that I've been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.

Intelligence we gathered at the time indicated that this was in fact leadership and we struck the leadership.

God does not require you to follow His leadings on blind trust. Behold the evidence of an invisible intelligence pervading everything, even your own mind and body.

The whole macho thing has to be reexamined. Because in my view, the Bush administration was weak, not strong. To engage in a policy of torture is a weak policy. Because ultimately, it encourages the terrorists. It undermines our own values. It corrupts our system. And it doesn't get good intelligence.

For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the 'Global War on Terror.'

I think of my films as not necessarily political but more moral. Between my father, my stepfather, and my mother - they all felt pretty passionately about the importance of standing up and doing the right thing, and none of them were suck-ups. What motivates me is usually abuse of power.

There's something magical about a home run. It almost violates the space of the stadium. It's a game of the imagination in some ways. Baseball.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.

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.

I like all music. Well, I don't like music that was created to make money. I don't really like bands that don't write their own music.

When you are a hero you are always running to save someone, sweating, worried and guilty. When you are a villain you are just lurking in the shadows waiting for the hero to pass by. Then you pop them in the head and go home... piece of cake.

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

We can't gather the intelligence we need to foil future attacks, if we are blindly granting terrorists the right to remain silent. But for some reason, we've already done that - with the terrorist who tried to bring down Flight 253.

White House leaks of classified information put the lives of U.S. service members, intelligence officers, and civilians at risk. That's why I support a measure passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee to crack down on such leaks.

The president has a right to discuss his national security policies with the public. But that should be done in the light of day without endangering our sources or methods. The public has no need to know details about intelligence assets or special operations units. Such disclosures endanger those who protect us.

Ted Cruz may be an intelligent person, but he doesn't carry out an intelligent debate. He oversimplifies, he exaggerates, and he basically led the Republican Party over the cliff in the fall of 2013. He has shown no qualifications, no legislation being passed, doesn't provide leadership, and he has no real experience.

As far as Iraq, the important thing is that the Taliban is gone in Afghanistan, three-quarters of the al-Qaida leadership is either dead or in jail, and we now have Saudi Arabia working with us, Pakistan working with us.

But 85 percent of the mosques have extremist leadership in this country. Most Muslims, the overwhelming majority of Muslims, are loyal Americans.

And if the imam and the Muslim leadership in that community is so intent on building bridges, then they should voluntarily move the mosque away from ground zero and move it whether it's uptown or somewhere else, but move it away from that area, the same as the pope directed the Carmelite nuns to move a convent away from Auschwitz.

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away.

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?

The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.

In God, the characteristics of men and women that we admire in men and women are combined. That's been a traditional Catholic teaching that God is the combination of opposites.

I have terrible handwriting. I now say it's a learning disability... but a nun who was a very troubled woman hit me over the fingers with a ruler because my writing was so bad.

People have an image of Italians. When I go somewhere in the world, I don't care where it is, when they look at me it's not about my intelligence. It's who can I beat up.

People are smarter than you might think.

And when they encounter works of art which show that using new media can lead to new experiences and to new consciousness, and expand our senses, our perception, our intelligence, our sensibility, then they will become interested in this music.

Intelligence is not a science.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But by providing the background picture - the universal situational awareness that we desire - by showing the anomalies, the Space-Based Radar will change the nature of how we do our analysis and our intelligence.