[…] rationalism is a form of intellectual bigotry which, in thinking about reality, tries to take it into account as little as possible.

Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still...

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain...

Wonder, as a quality of intellect, has fallen from favor.

Among the tastemakers and power brokers and intellectual agenda setters of late-twentieth-century America, orthodox Christianity was completely déclassé.

The tunnel under the wall of intellectual snobbery is the only way back to common sense reality, but most won’t find it because it is beneath them.

The gap (between intellectuals and politicians) divides writing hands, talking heads and thinking minds of this country into two sections. One section flaunts academic achievements to make up for shortfalls in intelligence. The other asserts...

So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of the natural sciences provides...

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual...

I’d start to explain with the outward sheepish and inner pride of the nerd.

What a lover’s heart knows let no man’s brain dispute.

When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us...

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than “politicians” think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting...

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one’s philosophy to fit...

Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical...

Intellectual labor is a common technique for the avoidance of thinking.

Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the...

Broadly put, philosophers think: politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.

A professional headshot in front of a bookshelf says you’re an intellectual. A professional headshot peeking though a bookshelf says you’re probably under a restraining order.

Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn’t seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to...

every cook can govern” to speak to the concept that there should be no hierarchies of power between those who lead and their constituencies. This idea is related to Antonio Gramsci’s argument that the goal...

I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.

Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.

[L]ike people, ideas have social lives. They’re one way when they’re by themselves, and another when they’re surrounded by their peers. Crammed together, they grow more uncertain, more interesting, more surprising; they come out of...

Intellectual discourse and investigation is admittedly great fun but only truly meaningful when conducted in the service of others.

An Idea is nothing but Information, It won’t do us any harm until we accept it as perception of truth in our mind, which in time will potentially evolve and construct major events in history.

Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrongheaded pseudointellectualism is far worse.

All names disappear. Children should be taught that in elementary school. But we’re afraid to teach them.

My intellect was my greatest vanity.

Reading . . . is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface...

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.