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I’ve noticed a certain anti-intellectualism going round this country, man, ever since 1980. Bill Hicks
Intellectuals are overwhelmingly servants of power. Noam Chomsky, In Conversation with Jonathan Freedland, Youtube 1.41.34, March 2013
Intellectuals: their task is to make up fabrications that protect power and divert attention from what’s obvious. Noam Chomsky, On Power, Dissent & Racism, Youtube 59.53
What they’re condemning is critics; they’re saying critics shouldn’t be allowed to raise questions. The reason? We have to silence criticism because everyone has to line up and sing hosannas to our leaders. That’s the job of intellectuals: round up the chorus so they all sing praises to your leaders while they march in the parade and tell you how magnificent we are. ibid.
By 1941 I was spending a large part of my time in downtown Manhattan gravitating to another group of radical intellectuals – these were in small bookstores … either there or in the anarchist offices … mostly anarchist refugees from the 1936 revolution. They too didn’t fit the standard formula of intellectuals … They were quite happy to spend time with a young kid. Noam Chomsky, lecture Havens Centre 8th April 2010, ‘The Role of the Radical Intellectual’
I do not feel obliged to believe God endowed man with reason and intellect and intended for him to forgo their use. Galileo Galilei
We may seek God by our intellect, but we only can find him with our heart. Cotvos
I have seldom met an intelligent person whose views were not narrowed and distorted by religion. John Buchanan
The gods offer no rewards for intellect. There was never one yet that showed any interest in it. Mark Twain, notebook
The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue. Mahatma Gandhi
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: –
We murder to dissect.
Enough of science and of art;
Close up these barren leaves. William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned, 1798
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Bertrand Russell
You don’t have to be a man for freedom. All you have to be is an intelligent human being. Malcolm X
All science, all human thought, is a form of play. The neotony of the intellect. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 13/13: The Long Childhood, BBC 1973
I asserted – and I repeat – that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man – a man of restless and versatile intellect – who, not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice. Thomas H Huxley, replying to Soapy Wilberforce
No-one can be a great thinker who does not recognise that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusion it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. John Stuart Mill
The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. John Keats
Enjoyment and not Abstinence is the food of intellect. William Blake
I’ve never been an intellectual but I have this look. Woody Allen
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. Albert Camus
An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. ‘Can they be brought together?’ This is a practical question. We must get down to it. ‘I despise intelligence’ really means: ‘I cannot bear my doubts’. Albert Camus
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended. Alfred North Whitehead, Dialogues, 1954
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. Socrates
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. Ernest Hemingway
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. Samuel Johnson
To the men-in-the-street, who, I’m sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word ‘Intellectual’ suggests straight away
A man who’s untrue to his wife. W H Auden, New Year Letter, 1941
The clever men at Oxford
Know all that there is to be knowed.
But they none of them know one half so much
As intelligent Mr Toad! Kenneth Grahame, Wind in the Willows
Intelligence is never too dear. Francis Walsingham
Intellectualism came very late to America. That’s why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals. Douglas Sirk
Intelligence is not to make no mistakes, but quickly to see how to make them good. Bertolt Brecht
In a survey of fifty countries, America was ranked second to last in intelligence. Residents of the USA were outraged – once the report was slowly explained to them. Derek McGovern, article Daily Mirror 27th May 2011
Why intelligence should have evolved from moving on two legs doesn’t seem obvious. Horizon: The Ape That Took Over the World, BBC 2001