Albert Camus  - Quotes

 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.  

Tags: intellectuals   intelligence   philosophy   scholars     


E.M. Forster  - Quotes

 One minute. You know nothing about him. He probably has his own joys and interests- wife, children, snug little home. That's where we practical fellows'- he smiled-'are more tolerant than you intellectuals. We live and let live, and assume that things are jogging on fairly well elsewhere, and that the ordinary plain man may be trusted to look after his own affairs. 

Tags: intellectuals   live   nothing   ordinary     
Alfred de Vigny  - Quotes

 Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don 

Tags: intellectuals   politics     


Christopher Hitchens  - Quotes

 During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke. 

Tags: 1990s   bosnia   croats   extremism   humour   intellectuals   jews   muslims   religion   serbs   sontag   zealotry   zenica     
Roy Blount Jr.  - Quotes

 Even intellectuals should have learned by now that objective rationality is not the default position of the human mind, much less the bedrock of human affairs. 

Tags: intellectuals   people   rationality     
Thomas Sowell  - Quotes

 Intellect is not wisdom. 

Tags: intellectuals   society     


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