“There are three intellectual pursuits, and, so far as I am aware, only three, in which human beings have performed major feats before the age of puberty. They are music, mathematics, and chess.” HumansAgeThreeHuman BeingsMajorsIntellectualMathematicsChessPursuitFeatsPuberty Book:George Steiner: A Reader Source: George Steiner: A Reader
“I view the major features of my own odyssey as a set of mostly fortunate contingencies. I was not destined by inherited mentality or family tradition to become a paleontologist. I can locate no tradition for scientific or intellectual careers anywhere on either side of my eastern European Jewish background. I view my serious and lifelong commitment to baseball in entirely the same manner: purely as a contingent circumstance of numerous, albeit not entirely capricious, accidents.” I CanSidesMy OwnViewsCareersSeriousCircumstancesMajorsIntellectualCommitmentTraditionBaseballAccidentsBackgroundsFortunateFeaturesMentalityEasternDestinedLifelongCapriciousOdysseyContingencyFamily Tradition Author:Stephen Jay Gould
“I don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.” WorldWantHas BeensHappensNextEnergySpaceWatchesGoneStudentsTaughtSourceMajorsIntellectualCapacityMortalsAweBreakthroughSpace TravelRenewable EnergyEnergy SourcesRenewable Energy Sources Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship.” MadeDoneTeacherPossibilityStudentsRight NowMajorsIntellectualWarmMade ItFriendlyDestroyingSingle Relationship Author:William Glasser
“[What I want to communicate] doesn't have a language with which I can communicate it. The things that I want to communicate are simply self-evident, emotional things. And the gifts of those things are that they bring both intellectual and emotional gifts - understanding. But I don't really have a major message that I want to bring to the world through my music. The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it.” PeopleKnowsWorldWantNeedsHumansI CanSelfLanguageUnderstandingHuman BeingsInformationEmotionalMinesMajorsMessagesIntellectualCommunicateBeing HumanEvidentEmotional Things Author:Jeff Buckley
“I would call an intellectual one whose instrument of work - his mind - is also his major source of pleasure; a man whose entertainment is his intelligence.” MenMindPleasureSourceMajorsIntellectualInstrumentsEntertainment Author:Marya Mannes
“The major cause for American Negroes intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and thus not remedial to a major degree by improvement in environment.” SocialCausesRaceEnvironmentDegreesMajorsIntellectualImprovementDeficitHereditary Author:William Shockley
“France has not been able to come to terms with the fact that it's not a major power anymore. I mean even before the Second World War Paris was one of the main centers of intellectual and cultural life. But now Paris is a kind of subsidiary of Germany, their traditional enemy and they can't come to terms with it.” WorldKindMeanWarFactsAbleTermEnemyMajorsIntellectualTraditionalFranceParisWar Of The WorldsGermanySecond World War Author:Noam Chomsky
“There was a transition going on - Baghdad being the intellectual capital of the world where major advances were made in agriculture and mathematics and engineering and medicine and astronomy, and then that all sort of collapsed. And I was trying to understand how such a intellectually fertile environment can lose its compass bearing. Because I think about the creative centers today - countries, or even regions. Will Silicon Valley always be as innovative? Will the United States be innovative, or will we become complacent?” ThinkingWorldTryingMadeCountryStatesTodayLosesUnitedUnited StatesCreativeEnvironmentMajorsIntellectualMathematicsMedicineAstronomyRegionsTransitionValleysEngineeringAgricultureCompassInnovativeFertileComplacentSiliconBaghdadSilicon ValleyIntellectual Capital Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
“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.” FirstsCountryTodayAmericaPoliticalCultureHavensMovementMajorsMassIntellectualEuropeWestWesternChinaDecadesWelcomeProtestEgypt1960sIndonesiaEruptionWestern EuropeBoliviaChurningOccupy MovementEurope And America Author:Pankaj Mishra
“What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.” PeopleHas BeensYoungGenerationsMajorsIntellectualForgottenProfessionThanksBreakthrough1960sContinuityAmerican WriterOlder GenerationRupture Author:Camille Paglia
“I think that a failure of statistical thinking is the major intellectual shortcoming of our universities, journalism and intellectual culture.” ThinkingCultureMajorsIntellectualUniversityJournalismShortcomings Author:Steven Pinker
“The major obstacle to a religious renewal is the intellectual classes, who are highly influential and tend to view religion as primitive superstition. They believe that science has left atheism as the only respectable intellectual stance.” BelieveLeftReligiousViewsClassAtheismMajorsIntellectualObstaclesSuperstitionsPrimitiveRenewalRespectableInfluentialStance Author:Robert Bork
“But when, at the end of my sophomore year, I became a philosophy major and started doing my first seriously pretentious thinking, I became a vegetarian again. The kind of willful forgetting that I was sure meat eating required felt too paradoxical to the intellectual life I was trying to shape. I thought life could, should, and must conform to the mold of reason. You can imagine how annoying this made me.” ThinkingShouldTryingYearsFirstsKindMadeEndsReasonPhilosophyFeltForgetImagineShapesEatingMajorsIntellectualMeatVegetarianAnnoyingConformMoldPretentiousThoughts On LifeParadoxicalSophomoreIntellectual LifeMeat EatingSophomore Year Author:Jonathan Safran Foer