Motivational Quotes

Intelligence and intellectuals

The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).

- Foucault, Michel

Intelligence and intellectuals Motivational Quotes

Best Quotes about Intelligence and intellectuals

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

Orwell, George

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

It's good to be clever, but not to show it.

Proverb, French

Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.

La Rochefoucauld, Francois De

To label me an intellectual is a misunderstanding of what that is.

Cavett, Dick

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

Thomas, Dylan

Foucault, Michel

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent full of doubt.

Russell, Bertrand

10.

The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.

Pound, Ezra

11.

I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

Kundera, Milan

12.

If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

13.

Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, But quickly to see how to make them good.

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

15.

People generally treat me like I'm very intelligent and really, I'm much less intelligent than she is. Scully is insanely intelligent.

Anderson, Gillian

16.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

Cudworth, Ralph J.

17.

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

Colby, Frank Moore

18.

You don't need intelligence to have luck, but you do need luck to have intelligence.

Proverb, Jewish

19.

And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, that one small head could carry all he knew.

Goldsmith, Oliver

20.

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

21.

The intellectual tradition is one of servility to power, and if I didn't betray it I'd be ashamed of myself.

Chomsky, Noam

22.

Intellectuals solve problems; geniuses prevent them.

Einstein, Albert

23.

There can be no two opinions as to what a highbrow is. He is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea.

Woolf, Virginia

24.

On a level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the insipid flatness of our present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.

Marx, Karl

25.

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.

Peter, Laurence J.

26.

Intelligence: I was asked tonight why I refuse to have truck with intellectuals after business hours. But of course I won t. 1. I am not an intellectual. Two minutes talk with Aldous Huxley,William Glock,or any of the New Statesman crowd would expose me utterly. 2. I am too tired after my day's work to man the intellectual palisade. 3. When my work is finished I want to eat,drink,smoke,and relax. 4. I don't know very much,but what I do know I know better than anybody,and I don't want to argue about it. I know what I think about an actor or an actress,and am not interested in what anybody else thinks. My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

Agate, James

27.

Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.

Huxley, Aldous

28.

It is little that one gains by cleverness.

29.

The intellect is weak; it has no power except over what is as weak as itself.

Al-Nuri

30.

I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

31.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

Weil, Simone

32.

How easy would life be if you were less intelligent!

Kocher, Gerhard

33.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Hellman, Lillian

34.

He is far too intelligent to become really cerebral.

Guin, Ursula K. Le

35.

If we look into ourselves we discover propensities which declare that our intellects have arisen from a lower form; could our minds be made visible we should find them tailed.

Reade, W. Winwood

36.

The role of the intelligence --that part of us which affirms and denies and formulates opinions is merely to submit.

Weil, Simone

37.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

Thoreau, Henry David

38.

You think you are clever until you find out how smart you are

39.

She was short on intellect, but long on shape.

Ade, George

40.

Undernourished, intelligence becomes like the bloated belly of a starving child: swollen, filled with nothing the body can use.

Dworkin, Andrea

41.

When you don't have an education, you've got to use your brains.

42.

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

Bronowski, Jacob

43.

Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.

Short, Solomon

44.

A highbrow is a person educated beyond his intelligence.

Matthews, Brander

45.

It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value.

Hawking, Stephen

46.

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

Einstein, Albert

47.

Reason is man's faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man's ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man.

Fromm, Erich

48.

The intellect is a very nice whirligig toy, but how people take it seriously is more than I can understand.

Pound, Ezra

49.

I was street smart, but unfortunately the street was Rodeo Drive.

Fisher, Carrie

50.

Clever people will recognize and tolerate nothing but cleverness.

Amiel, Henri Frederic