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Intellect Quotes

Browse 1879 quotes about Intellect.

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Intellect Quotes

“We say then, that Christianity is adapted to the intellect, because its spirit coincides with that of true philosophy; because it removes the incubus of sensuality and low vice; because of the place it gives to truth; because it demands free inquiry; because its mighty truths and systems are brought before the mind in the same way as the truths and systems of nature; because it solves higher problems than nature can; and because it is so communicated as to be adapted to every mind.”

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Book:Evidences of Christianity: Lectures Before the Lowell Institute, January 1844
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“A happy marriage perhaps represents the ideal of human relationship -- a setting in which each partner, while acknowledging the need of the other, feels free to be what he or she by nature is: a relationship in which instinct as well as intellect can find expression; in which giving and taking are equal; in which each accepts the other, and I confronts Thou.”

NeedsGivingFeelsHumansWellsAcceptingMarriageExpressionEqualIdealsInstinctIntellectPartnersSettingSettingsHuman RelationsHuman RelationshipsHappy Marriage
Book:The Integrity of the Personality
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“Whether game theory leads to clear-cut solutions, to vague solutions, or to impasses, it does achieve one thing. In bringing techniques of logical and mathematical analysis gives men an opportunity to bring conflicts up from the level of fights, where the intellect is beclouded by passions, to the level of games, where the intellect has a chance to operate.”

MenGivingDoeFightingPassionOpportunityGamesChanceLevelsClearCuttingOne ThingAchieveTheoryConflictSolutionsIntellectTechniqueMathematicalAnalysisLogicalVagueImpasseMathematical Analysis
Author:Anatol Rapoport
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“I know that much of the structure and plan of the universe is beyond my understanding and not at all similar to anything of our earthly world that I have experienced so far. I marvel at the intellect and attention to detail, the precision manifested by the workings of this great and often unseen force of which we are all a part.”

KnowsWorldUniverseForceUnderstandingAttentionPlansStructureDetailsIntellectUnseenPrecisionAttention To DetailUnseen Forces
Author:Rosemary Altea
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“Wit is something more than a gymnastic trick of the intellect; true wit implies a beam of thought into the essence of a question, a flash that lights up a situation. Wit suggests the delicate but delightful play of a rapier in the hands of a master.”

PlayHandsLightSituationMastersEssenceIntellectWitTricksDelicateFlashDelightfulBeamLight Up
Book:Moods of Life: Popular Psychological Studies of Affairs of Every Day
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“The thing to understand is that if you are going to reform society you don't start with cops. And if you are going to reform intellect you don't start with psychiatrists. If you don't like our present social system or intellectual system the best thing you can do with either cops or psychiatrists is stay out of their way. You leave them 'till last.”

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Book:LILA An Inquriry into Morals
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“There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith- and, indeed, our hope- the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid.”

IfsThinkingWellsMayHas BeensSeemsMightUniversePlansUnityIntellectReach OutPinsElectronsRims
Book:A Choice of Gods
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“Particular honour belongs to those who believed in the possibility of mechanical flight when all the world was against them; not the visionaries because they hoped for it merely, but those who by sheer force of intellect perceived the means by which it could be accomplished and directed their experiments along the right path. ... The name of Lilienthal is now among the most honoured, but curiously his own countrymen were the last to recognize the value of his work.”

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Author:Otto Lilienthal
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“Young men, terminate, I beseech you, in your own experience, the sad divorce which has too often existed between intellect and piety. Take your stand, unswerving, heroic, by the altar of truth; and from that altar let neither sophistry nor ridicule expel you. Let your faith rest with a child's trust, with a martyr's grip, upon the truth as it is in Jesus.”

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Book:John Bunyan, a lecture
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“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.”

MenShouldLittlesImportantLastsCan DoSimpleForgetTeachObjectsOughtLessonsThousandPureAll ThingsImportant ThingsPhotographCreditIntellectNineEnginesModestTelephonesNinetySteamPlagiarismNinety NineTelegraphSteam EnginesPhonograph
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)
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“Fancy what a game of chess would be if all the chessmen had passions and intellects, more or less small and cunning; if you were not only uncertain about your adversary's men, but a little uncertain also about your own. You would be especially likely to be beaten, if you depended arrogantly on your mathematical imagination, and regarded your passionate pieces with contempt. Yet this imaginary chess is easy compared with a game a man has to play against his fellow-men with other fellow-men for instruments.”

IfsMenLittlesPlayWould BePassionGamesEasyImaginationPiecesFellowsInstrumentsPassionateIntellectChessMathematicalFancyContemptHuman ConditionImaginaryUncertainBeatenCunningFellow ManAdversaries
Author:George Eliot
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“The task of an author is, either to teach what is not known, or to recommend known truths by his manner of adorning them; either to let new light in upon the mind, and open new scenes to the prospect, or to vary the dress and situation of common objects, so as to give them fresh grace and more powerful attractions, to spread such flowers over the regions through which the intellect has already made its progress, as may tempt it to return, and take a second view of things hastily passed over, or negligently regarded.”

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Book:The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with his life, and notes on his Lives of the poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In eleven volumes ...
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“Perhaps no order of mammals presents us with so extraordinary a series of gradations as this [step by step, from humans to apes to monkeys to lemurs] - leading us insensibly from the crown and summit of the animal creation down to creatures, from which there is but a step, as it seems, to the lowest, smallest, and least intelligent of the placental Mammalia. It is as if nature herself had forseen the arrogance of man, and with Roman severity had provided that his intellect, by its very triumphs, should call into prominence the slaves, admonishing the conqueror that he is but dust.”

IfsMenShouldHumansSeemsOrderAnimalStepsCreationEvolutionCreaturesIntelligentSlaveSeriesExtraordinaryIntellectDustTriumphArroganceCrownsSmallestMonkeysLowestSummitApesConquerorMammalsSeverityProminenceLemurs
Author:Thomas Huxley
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“Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and a great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety?”

MenMayGivenMoralCareersAtheismBirthHigherHolySpeechStandardsProfoundAverageIntellectPositive AtheismAidsAcceptedReputationMediocrityInstructionModeratesZealPietyEgoismAffluenceRhetoricalPlatitudesEnglish Society
Book:The Essays of George Eliot
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“It is easy to remove the mind from harping on the lost illusion of immortality. The disciplined intellect fears nothing and craves no sugar-plum at the day's end, but is content to accept life and serve society as best it may. Personally I would not care for immortality in the least. There is nothing better than oblivion, since in oblivion there is no wish unfulfilled. We had it before we were born, yet did not complain. Shall we whine because we know it will return? It is Elysium enough for me, at any rate.”

KnowsMindMayEndsEnoughCareLostWishEasyBornAcceptingAtheismReturnIllusionRateIntellectPositive AtheismComplainingImmortalityRemoveSugarOblivionCraveFear NotFear NothingPlumsElysium
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“They had rejected the soul-body dichotomy, with its two corollaries: the impotence of man's mind and the damnation of this earth; they had rejected the doctrine of suffering as man's metaphysical fate, they proclaimed man's right to the pursuit of happiness and were determined to establish on earth the conditions required for man's proper existence, by the "unaided" power of their intellect.”

MenMindTwoSoulBodyEarthSufferingExistenceFateAtheismConditionsIntellectDeterminedPursuitDoctrineRejectedMetaphysicalPursuit Of HappinessDamnationImpotenceDichotomy
Author:Ayn Rand
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“There is no subject more captivating, more worthy of study, than nature. To understand this great mechanism, to discover the forces which are active, and the laws which govern them, is the highest aim of the intellect of man.”

MenLawForceStudySubjectsHighestAimWorthyIntellectActiveMechanismCaptivating
Book:The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla: With Special Reference to His Work in Polyphase Currents and High Potential Lighting
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“Passion, intellect, moral activity - these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.”

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Book:Cassandra and Suggestions for Thought by Florence Nightingale
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“[Some] people really expect the passion of love to fill and gratify every need of life, whereas nature only intended that it should meet one of many demands. They insist on making it stand for all the emotional pleasures of life and art; expecting an individual and self-limited passion to yield infinite variety, pleasure, and distraction, and to contribute to their lives what the arts and the pleasurable exercise of the intellect gives to less limited and less intense idealists.”

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Book:The Essential Willa Cather Collection
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