#intellect

All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she as extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity. ↗

— Lewis Hyde

#intellectual-property #art

Learning without thought is labor lost. Thought without learning is intellectual death. ↗

— Confucius

#intellectual #learning #thought #death

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. ↗

— Walter M. Miller Jr.

#cynicism #politics #war #communication

A ruling intelligentsia, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa, treats the masses as raw material to be experimented on, processed, and wasted at will. ↗

— Eric Hoffer

#oligarchy #tyranny #experience

Friend, I am not suggesting at all. You see, I know now. Let us be frank. Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. At College, you know, we just started automatically writing the kind of essays that got good marks and saying the kind of things that won applause. When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith? ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#education #intellectual-honesty #education

I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being. ↗

— Leonid Borodin

#intellectualism #intellectuals #posturing #pretense #faith

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people's values. ↗

— Gerald Brenan

#ideas #importance #intellectuals #more #other

The concept of reason itself appears as an artificial attempt to separate intellectual powers from the frustrations, emotions, and accidents which cause events; the concept of reason is viewed as facade to prevent change. ↗

— Edward Levi

#appears #artificial #attempt #cause #change

Intellectuals that approach me, only serve to feeding my intellectualism. Imaginists that approach me, only serve to enhancing my Imaginism. It's impossible to feed my I, for I am the Greatest 'I AM. ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#intellectual #supremacy #imagination

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself. ↗

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

#committees #confronting #conscience #courage #everything