Intellectual Quotes

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact. ”
― William S. Burroughs

“Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
― George Orwell

“If only everyone could know and live with their inner craziness. Would the world be a worse place for it? No, people would be fairer and happier.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“Reading is my passion and my escape since I was 5 years old. Overall, children don't realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“To force oneself to believe and to accept a thing without understanding is political, and not spiritual or intellectual.”
― Siddhārtha Gautama

“Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions. And even a cursory glance at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of Newton's ‘Principia’, is Darwin's ‘Origin of Species.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley

“If we are not prepared to spell out clearly the content of our thinking or to ‘name’ undisputedly the quality of the cold hard facts, we deserve to be disentitled, intellectually. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Misfortunes make us wise”
― Mary Norton, The Borrowers Afield

“Through their intellectual disability or mental illiteracy, some cannot free themselves from the imprisonment of irrevocable idiocy and feel condemned to find gratifying compensation by extracting the vilest qualities from the deep quarters of their dark self. ("Ugly mug offense")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract thinking instead of simply paying attention to what’s going on in front of me.”
― David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

“You make all the fashion statements just by dressing up your mind.”
― Jason Mraz

“excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.”
― William Blake, William Blake

“We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot."
"Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.”
― Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take. You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship. For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence. If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”
― Edward W. Said

“Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.”
― Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms

“To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that intellect is really a safe, bland, and emollient thing. In a certain sense, the suspicious Tories and militant philistines are right: intellect is dangerous. Left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question. "Let us admit the case of the conservative," John Dewey once wrote. "If we once start thinking no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place." Further, there is no way of guaranteeing that an intellectual class will be discreet and restrained in the use of its influence; the only assurance that can be given to any community is that it will be far worse off if it denies the free uses of the power of intellect than if it permits them. To be sure, intellectuals, contrary to the fantasies of cultural vigilantes, are hardly ever subversive of a society as a whole. But intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, fraud, illusion, dogma, or interest is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class and becoming the object of exposure, indignation, or ridicule.”
― Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

“All I know is that the hours are long... and constrain us to beguile them with proceedings which ... may at first sight seem reasonable, until they become a habit.”
― Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“فكرة الحداثة والعلمانية والتنوير فكرة متأخرة عن الثورة العلمية بقرنيين على الأقل وهي نتيجة الثورة العلمية ومعلولهاوليست شرطها وعلتها”
― أبو يعرب المرزوقي, صونًا للفلسفة والدين

“Además no es tan malo vivir solo. Yo la paso bien, decidiendo a cada instante lo que quiero hacer, y gracias a la soledad me conozco; algo fundamental para vivir”
― Facundo Cabral

“Intellectual freedom begins when one says with Socrates that he knows that he knows nothing, and then goes on to add: Do you know what you don’t know and therefore what you should know? If your answer is affirmative and humble, then you are your own teacher, you are making your own assignment, and you will be your own best critic. You will not need externally imposed courses, nor marks, nor diplomas, nor a nod from your boss . . . in business or in politics. (from the essay The Last Don Rag)”
― Scott M. Buchanan

“The usual duty of the “intellectual” is to argue for complexity and to insist that phenomena in the world of ideas should not be sloganized or reduced to easily repeated formulae.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“أسمع من المحيط إلى الخليج أن من لا يقدر على إفهامنا لم تحل معادلات الدرجة الثانية بالطريقة التي تحل بها يخرف حول ابستمولوجية السقوط الحر ونسبية اينشتاين خلطا بين التعليقات الإيديولوجية والنفسية على مايزعم جاريا في وعي العلماء وتصوراتهم وبين فهم آليات الإبداع العلمي وقوانينه”
― أبو يعرب المرزوقي, صونًا للفلسفة والدين

“She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time.”
― Richard Yates, The Easter Parade

“A great thinker does not necessarily have to discover a master idea but has to rediscover and to affirm a true but forgotten, ignored or misunderstood master idea and interpret it in all the diverse aspects of thought not previously done, in a powerful and consistent way, despite surrounding ignorance and opposition. This criterion we think would include all prophets and their true followers among the Muslim scholars. He is both a great and original thinker who brings new meanings and interpretations to old ideas, thereby providing both continuity and originality to the important intellectual and cultural problems of his time and through it, of mankind. Thus the brilliant interpretations of scholars and sages like al-Ghazali and Mulla Sadra then, and Iqbal and al-Attas now, deserve to be recognized and acknowledged as manifesting certain qualities of greatness and originality.”
― Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud, Filsafat dan Praktik Pendidikan Islam Syed M. Naquib Al-Attas

“Have you guys ever thought about the fact that socks are like the donut holes of underpants?”
― Travis McElroy