Quotes About Intellect

Playing chess can make you a better poker player because it forces you to think several moves ahead. That kind of intense mental exercise develops a deeper level of thinking than is typically encountered when playing poker.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

One of the things I love about wen wu is its encouragement of developing the spiritual and intellectual aspects of the self that are actually more important than the development of the body and the capacity to commit violence - which is how much of Western pop culture defines a man.

Cultivate the frontal portion of her brain as much as that of man is cultivated, and she will stand his equal at least. Even now, where her mind has been called out at all, her intellect is as bright, as capacious, and as powerful as his.

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.

I often feel intellectually frustrated when I'm in a position where I'm not moving forward; when I'm not enquiring about something.

Intellectually, now, I believe that it is a complete vanity to say positively there is no God.

When you write, you don't have the social constraints of having people in front of you, so you talk about abstract matters.

If you follow reason far enough it always leads to conclusions that are contrary to reason.

That is what is happening in America. People see things, but still they've just completely lost the ability to think critically.

I have 'The Economist' and the 'New Scientist' on my bedside table - and 'GQ,' of course.

We should take care not to make the intellect our goal; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.

I'm not a risk-taker; that's probably why I write - because when you're easily bored, but you don't like taking risks, you end up doing it all in your head.

The person most qualified to tell the tale of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the man himself, as gifted an intellect as he is an athlete.

The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.

Practice radical humility. Take no credit for your talents, intellectual abilities, aptitudes, or proficiencies. Be in a state of awe and bewilderment.

Democracy's premise rests on the notion that the collective wisdom of the majority will prove right more often than it's wrong; that given sufficient opportunity in the pursuit of happiness, your population will develop its talents, its intellect, its better judgment; that over time its capacity for discernment and self-correction will be enlarged.

'Babylone, Babylone' is remarkable. Emmanuel is fascinated by Mexico. He knows the country without having been there... I am amazed by his intellectual capacities. He is extraordinary. I am talking about the man, not about my husband.

I]f we take the whole history of philosophy, the systems reduce themselves to a few main types which, under all the technical verbiage in which the ingenious intellect of man envelops them, are just so many visions, modes of feeling the whole push, and seeing the whole drift of life, forced on one by one's total character and experience, and on the whole preferred – there is no other truthful word – as one's best working attitude. (James 1977, pp. 14–15)

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

are not merely lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves.' Gilbert Highet.

The theoretical broadening which comes from having many humanities subjects on the campus is offset by the general dopiness of the people who study these things...

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears.