Quotes About Intellect

Why was it given to Darwin, less ambitious, less imaginative, and less learned than many of his colleagues, to discover the theory sought after by others so assiduously? How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance?

We're designed by natural selection to get satisfaction out of finding the answers to questions.

Usted tiene condiciones innegables, pero estudie, usted cree que porque piensa lo ha hecho todo, y pensar no es nada más que un principio.

The only thing an intellectual can do is watch things blow up, from a safe distance, of course.

Para nosotros el triunfo es la muerte del intelecto y de la imaginación. Nunca fuimos leales a los triunfadores.

Para ella la lectura estaba relacionada directamente con el placer y

One operates on the mind with the mind. What else is there, after all?

Count calories if you like, but go ahead and gorge yourself on books. What have you got to lose but a small mind?

always busy because of interesting books

But this room's walls were completely covered by bookcases, filled, which reached to the ceiling. There must have been hundreds—perhaps thousands—of books, their titles embossed in shiny letters.

Miles was…the thing is, he was afflicted with a severe birth injury. He grew up pretty much crippled, so he poured all his frustrated energy into his intellect. Since the Vorkosigan family motto might as well be, Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving , the effect was pretty frightening. And it worked for him, so he did it some more.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. ~Galileo Galilei

However, all that doesn't necessarily mean they are using that knowledge to do anything other than bore their friends to death.

The part of the soul that corresponds to Yetzirah, the Formative World, is called the Ruach—the intellect

There are many men like this; they can form a plausible theory and grasp its logical points, but take it away from them and destroy it utterly before their eyes, and they will not so easily lash their tired brains at once to build another theory in place of the one that is ruined.

I am not insane, he said. A woman of your highly advanced intellect ought to be able to perceive that I am in love. With you. I wish you had told me. It was deuced embarrassing to find it out from your *brother*.

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.

Philosophers are good at parties but not for cleaning up after.

These were the sorts of notions that had been raised in all my classes, and we had chased them round and round like dogs maddened by their tails.

she realised suddenly that there was something about music that had never been revealed to her before: it was not merely the production of sweet sound; it was, to those who understood it, an emotional and intellectual odyssey.

Reading without thinking is as nothing, for a book is less important for what it says than for what it makes you think.

And at night," I added, "a man is too tired. I fall asleep over my books, but we must read, not only for what we read but for what it makes us think. Shaping a country is not all done with the hands but with the mind as well.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain

a love for good books was one of the best safeguards a man could have