Quotes About Intellect

You learned this," Kabsal said, lifting up her drawing of Jasnah, "from a book." "Er…yes?" He looked back at the picture. "I need to read more.

Spectacles. They were kind of like a hat for smart people.

Aspiring Asimovs!

Technology is limited", Jason said, "Only the mind is infinite.

The main objective is to learn to think crudely. Crude thinking is the great one's thinking.

I know that these examples are symptomatic of the cruelty culture that we live in today and that everyone is fair game, but think about how and what they chose to attack. They went after my appearance and my mothering—two kill shots taken straight from the list of feminine norms. They didn't go after my intellect or my arguments. That wouldn't hurt enough.

All really educated men," he would soon write, "whether they have studied in the halls of a University, or in a cottage or a work-shop, are essentially self-educated.

The injunction to know oneself can be found in many traditions, including the Western philosophical tradition that goes back to Socrates. According to Zen, however, to truly discover what the self is, we need a more direct path than mere intellectual reasoning.

You're still trapped in that blind worship of the intellect. . . . . . Something about her zeal repels me, even though I do respect her. There's a germ of fanaticism in that fierce enthusiasm to save the world and redeem mankind—a touch of coercion and relentlessness that's frightening to me. She wants to fight evil or what she sees as evil—but couldn't that combativeness degenerate into an evil itself? My intellect asks that question and I can't silence it.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare

It is not all books that are as dull as their readers.

Which is the best man to deal with,-he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?

We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsmen who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.

The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob, before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Books which are books are all that you want, and there are but half a dozen in any thousand.

books are the society we keep... Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Wir haben heute Professoren der Philosophie, aber keine Philosophen.

I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading.

orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.

Some of the evils to which theology says that Lust will give rise are: blindness of intellect in respect of divine things; precipitancy in acting without judgment; want of regard for what befits one's state or person; inconstancy in good; hatred of God as an Avenger of such sins; love of this world and its pleasures; inordinate fear of death.

La generación actual tiene el privilegio, que no tuvo ninguna otra, de contar con ese ingente acervo intelectual.

If you follow this method with all problems—i.e., thinking a thing out for yourself before looking up what others have thought—you will soon improve your thinking surprisingly.

Leaves of Grass is] monstrous because it pretends to persuade the soul while it slights the intellect; because it pretends to gratify the feelings while it outrages the taste.

It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar.