Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hea...
The more we learn of outer space and inner space, of quasars and quarks, of Big Bangs and Little Blips, the more remote, abstract and intellectually inconsequential it all becomes.
Sensual indulgence weakens the mind and debases the soul. The moral and intellectual powers are benumbed and paralyzed by the gratification of the animal propensities and it is impossible for the slave of passion to realize the sacred obligation of t...
I wouldn't want [the people of Baleyworld] to live that long as a general thing. The pace of historical and intellectual advance would then become too slow. Those at the top would stay in power too long. Baleyworld would sink into conversation and de...
It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellect...
If a man can make me laugh and stimulate me intellectually, then I wouldn't mind if he was 4 ft. 8 in. with a huge belly. The only thing that would put me off is bad breath - but even that can be fixed. A bad personality isn't so easy to fix.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in thei...
I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels a...
Nearly all people stand in great horror of annihilation, and yet to give up your individuality is to annihilate yourself. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
My childhood is more hick than I could ever possibly relate to you, and also more intellectual than you would ever expect. For instance, me and my sister, when we were little, we would compete to see who could eat the most squirrel brains.
He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant...
Mental ghettos are not mirages; they actually exist in palpable reality: being "open" inside one's mental or intellectual ghetto does not open its door but simply allows one to harbour the illusion that there is no ghetto and no door. The most danger...
When I was 20, in 1957, and maybe you would say I was old enough to know better, but nevertheless, I was completely nuts about Buddy Holly. And I loved pop bands that had absolutely no intellectual pretensions whatsoever. I loved the Monkees.
Notwithstanding the fact that the most innovative and progressive space we've seen - the Internet - has been the place where intellectual property has been least respected. You know, facts don't get in the way of this ideology.
You're like candy. People lick your knowledge to become wise, lick your words from your powerful mouth and say it even better than you. Lick each step you make and stay on a good track, and once you're dead, the lickers scavenge for another intellect...
We're presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming to realize that even mind...
When any young director gets hired by a studio to do a $125 million film based on a preexisting piece of intellectual property, they're climbing into the meat grinder. And what you're coming out with on the other side is a generic, heavily studio-con...
The social sciences offer equal promise for improving human welfare; our lives can be greatly improved through a deeper understanding of individual and collective behavior. But to realize this promise, the social sciences, like the natural sciences, ...
Want to depose the government of a poor country with resources? Want to bash Muslims? Want to build support for American military interventions around the world? Want to undermine governments that are raising their people up from poverty because they...
Theology necessitates an image of God as a conscious, rational, supernatural being of unlimited power and scope who cares about humans and imposes moral codes and responsibilities upon them, thereby generating serious intellectual questions such as: ...
When those of Jewish blood exhibit moral or intellectual superiority, genius or special talent, we feel pride in them, even if they have abjured the faith like Spinoza, Marx, Disraeli or Heine. Despite the meditations of pundits or the decrees of cou...
