Best intellectual & political Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“The American Heritage Dictionary defines crucible as "a place, time, or situation characterized by the confluence of powerful intellectual, social, economic, or political forces; a severe test of patience or belief; a vessel for melting material at high temperatures." A crucible was the vessel in which medieval alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold. That the alchemists inevitably failed in their audacious attempts doesn't denigrate the power of the crucible as a metaphor for the circumstances that cause an individual to be utterly transformed.”

“I just went along with political activists and interested in other intellectual interests which I pursued kind of at random. I never had a real college education. I got a degree, but it was just patching together courses here and there.”

Kind Real Together Political Courses Interest College Degrees Intellectual Activist Pursued Here And There College Education

Author:Noam Chomsky

“What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it's still there. At the same time, we don't know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, "Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring," and - you know, what I'm advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.”

“True Sufism is resistance: spiritual, intellectual, social, cultural, political and economic resistance. It cannot be, for sure, supporting dictators.”

Spiritual Political Social Economic Intellectual Resistance Sufism Dictator

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“Today, practically every country outside the West is undergoing an intellectual, political, and cultural churning, from China to Bolivia, Egypt to Indonesia, but we haven't really had, after the 1960s, a major oppositional culture in Western Europe and America. The Occupy movement was so startling and welcome partly because it was the first such eruption of mass protests in decades.”

“I came to the conclusion that most people in America would really like to be able to get a job where they think they're doing something noble and nice and good and it isn't just for the money. But the reason they hate what they call the cultural elite is that they see it as a class that's grabbed all the jobs where you can get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - if it's art, if it's charity, if it's intellectual, if it's political, whatever it might be.”

People Thinking Art Reason Political Hate Nice Intellectual Charity Conclusion

Author:David Graeber

“The defining moment in American economic history is when Bill Clinton lobbied to get China into the World Trade Organization. It was the worst political and economic mistake in American history in the last 100 years. China went into the World Trade Organization and agreed to play by certain rules. Instead, they are illegally subsidizing their exports, manipulating their currency, stealing all of our intellectual property, using sweatshops, using pollution havens. What happens is, our businesses and workers are playing that game with two hands tied behind their back.”

World Moments Political Mistake Economic Worst Intellectual Trade Property Clinton Stealing Pollution Currency American History Intellectual Property

Author:Peter Navarro

“For me, what I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.”

Thinking Art Real Political Artist Literature Risk Intellectual

Author:Salman Rushdie

“I respect people who come forward and speak, but I'm not asking most of the sex workers I interview now about their work. I'm asking them about their lives in general or their political organizing. I take pains source things pointing back to intellectual work that sex workers have produced, because that's really absent.”

People Pain Political Speak Intellectual Pointing Respect People

Author:Melissa Gira Grant

“Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.”

Kind Shows Political Faith Politics Moral Confidence Intellectual Capacity

Author:George McGovern

“Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That's where I'm very optimistic.”

Firsts Believe Political Revolution Intellectual Optimistic Believe In Me Political Change

Author:Ron Paul

“By exploring the political and moral colorings of discoveries about what makes us tick, we can have a more honest science and a less fearful intellectual milieu.”

Political Moral Honest Intellectual Discovery Fearful Exploring Tick Milieu

Author:Steven Pinker

“Now, I'm not saying I'm fashionable, but there are sociological interests that matter to me, things that are theoretical, political, intellectual and also concerned with vanity and beauty that we all think about but that I try to mix up and translate into fashion.”

Thinking Trying Matter Political Interest Fashion Intellectual Concerned Vanity Translate Theoretical Fashionable Sociological

Author:Miuccia Prada

“Tunisia's responsibility, and especially that of its political and intellectual elites, is enormous. All the protagonists of the nation's social, cultural, economic and political life must work to overcome useless and counterproductive polarisation, and to find solutions to domestic, regional and international problems.”

Problem Political Nations Social Responsibility Economic Intellectual Solutions Overcoming International Enormous Useless Elites Protagonists Political Life Counterproductive Tunisia

Author:Tariq Ramadan

“The first duty of government is to see that people have food, fuel, and clothes. The second, that they have means of moral and intellectual education.”

People Firsts Mean Government Political Politics Education Moral Duty Clothes Intellectual Fuel

Book:Fors Clavigera

Source: Fors Clavigera

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

Ideas Light Political Politics Freedom Mines Intellectual Property Advertising Instruction Patents Intellectual Property Darkening Creativity And Learning

Author:Thomas Jefferson

“The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).”

“[T]he more one is conscious of one's political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one's aesthetic and intellectual integrity.”

Political Chance Acting Sacrifice Integrity Intellectual Conscious Aesthetic Bias

Book:Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

“In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people. All the Communists who were hanged at the time by other Communists were awarded such abuse. Unlike those who had their feet solidly on the ground, they were said to float in the air. So it was fair, in a way, that as punishment the ground was permanently pulled out from under their feet, that they remained suspended a little above the floor.”

People Way Littles Said Political Cutting Air Feet Intellectual Fairs Abuse Punishment Insult Communist Floats Suspended Jargon

Author:Milan Kundera

“If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and...give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves.”

Source: Letters Papers from Prison

“There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future.”

Source: The Culture of Terrorism

“Our contemporary Western society, in spite of its material, intellectual and political progress, is increasingly less conducive to mental health, and tends to undermine the inner security, happiness, reason and the capacity for love in the individual; it tends to turn him into an automaton who pays for his human failure with increasing mental sickness, and with despair hidden under a frantic drive for work and so called pleasure.”

Humans Reason Political Turns Individual Pleasure Pay Progress Security Materials Despair Intellectual Capacity Mental Health Western Contemporary Spite Sickness Frantic Western Society

Author:Erich Fromm

“I am convinced that we will never build a democratic state based on rule of law if we do not at the same time build a state that is-regardless of how unscientific this may sound to the ears of a political scientist-humane, moral, intellectual and spiritual, and cultural.”

Ifs May States Spiritual Law Political Sound Moral Hero Intellectual Ears Scientist Democratic Convinced Heroic Humane Rule Of Law

Author:Vaclav Havel

Intellectual Quotes

Related topics

Intellectual Quotes