Quotes About Intellect

Most people worth knowing enjoy reading.

Not a wall in the building lacked books. Books even occupied the space above doorways.

There is a difference — subtle but very significant — between having faith in my faith (i.e., faith in my intellectual concepts about God — another way of saying "leaning on my own understanding") and having faith in God. There is a corresponding difference between doubting my faith and doubting God.

Solving problems, learning how the universe is put together-that's what had always captivated me.

Damn. How much time did you spend in the library? "I am a library.

Today the greatest single source of wealth is between your ears.

What is the most important and valuable work that you do, in any field or profession? It's thinking!

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is why most people would rather die than think.

Thomas Edison once wrote, "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is

There is a saying, "There are those who think. There are those who think they think. And then there is the vast majority who would rather die than think.

A man can be known by his library better than by his house or dress.

Over all this lay Hoppie's dictum: First with the head and then with the heart. Winning was something you worked at intellectually, emotion clouds the mind and is its natural enemy. This made for a loneliness which often let me aching to share an emotion but equally afraid that if I did so I would reveal a weakness which could later be used against me.

A reader of mine is a deluxe reader, not because I'm so great but because in order to get to me you have to take a path through literature, not through some books bought out of curiosity at the bookstore. A reader of mine has to have read other things.

I can spot an underemployed lazy intellectual anywhere.

But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.

intellectual capacity is no guarantee against being dead wrong.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.

It may be that there are kernels of truth in a few of these doctrines, but their widespread acceptance betokens a lack of intellectual rigor, an absence of skepticism, a need to replace experiments by desires.

Nevertheless his prodigious intellectual powers persisted unabated. In 1696, the Swiss mathematician Johann Bernoulli challenged his colleagues to solve an unresolved issue called the brachistochrone problem, specifying the curve connecting two points displaced from each other laterally, along which a body, acted upon only by gravity, would fall in the shortest time.

through lowered educational standards, declining intellectual competence, diminished zest for substantive debate, and social sanctions against skepticism, our liberties can be slowly eroded and our rights subverted.

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. —T. H. Huxley

I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgement until the evidence is in.

El reduccionismo no parece conceder un respeto suficiente a la complejidad del universo. A algunos se les antoja como un híbrido curioso de arrogancia y pereza intelectual.