Quotes About Intellect

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.

Some of the deepest truths are simple, when seen in the clearest light, and it takes a lucid intellect to grasp them so thoroughly that their simplicity can be brought into that light and offered to all, not just the privileged few.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. [...] To endure uncertainty is difficult, but so are most of the other virtues.

There are things that are valued more than pleasure; no one would be content to go through life with a child's intellect, even if it were pleasant to do so. Each animal has its proper pleasure, and the proper pleasure of man is connected with reason.

it is sad really to see the kind of boys that are common everywhere. No mind, no independent thought, no love of good books nor of the higher refinements of morality. It is really sad that the upper classes of a civilised and (supposed to be) moral country can produce nothing better.

There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

AÅŸ vrea sa traiesc într-o lume in care educaÅ£ia sa-ÅŸi propun? drept scop libertatatea intelectual? ÅŸi nu inchistarea unor minÅ£i fragede într-o armur? de dogme menite sa le protejeze de-a lungul vieÅ£ii de revelaÅ£ia unor probe impartiale. Lumea are nevoie de inimi deschise ÅŸi de minÅ£i deschise ÅŸi ele nu se pot obÅ£ine printr-un sistem rigid, fie el nou sau vechi.

Without being aware that I was following in my father's footsteps, I read, before I went to Cambridge, Mill's Logic and Political Economy, and made elaborate notes in which I practised the art of expressing the gist of each paragraph in a single sentence.

In his philosophy, nothing is held to be quite true, and nothing quite false; what can be uttered has only a limited truth, and, since men must talk, we cannot blame them for not speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are "not intellectually corrigible"—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing.

The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only the material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of providing food for the mind.

I never found that love, either when it prospered or when it did not, interfered in the slightest with my intellectual concentration.

The goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body.

Not all of the Greeks, but a large proportion of them, were passionate, unhappy, at war with themselves, driven along one road by the intellect and along another by the passions, with the imagination to conceive heaven and the wilful self-assertion that creates hell.

I feel a real and solid pleasure when anybody points out a fallacy in any of my views, because I care much less about my opinions than about their being true.

The best we can do, according to Bradley, is to say things that are 'not intellectually corrigible'—further progress is only possible through a synthesis of thought and feeling, which, when achieved, will lead to our saying nothing. Ideas have degrees of truth, greater or less according to the stage at which they come in the dialectic.

This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. One

The free intellect will see as God might see, without a here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately, in the sole and exclusive desire of knowledge -- knowledge as impersonal, as purely contemplative, as it is possible for man to attain.

El problema nace de la filosofía de la vida que todos han recibido, según la cual la vida es una contienda, una competición, en la que solo el vencedor merece respeto. Esta visión de la vida conduce a un cultivo exagerado de la voluntad, a expensas de los sentidos y del intelecto

This seems plainly absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

The demand for certainty is an intellectual vice.

There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the "intellectual love of God".

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it." - Bertrand Russell

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death.