“Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.”
“Characters,” p. 304
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools." by André Gide?
André Gide 74
French novelist and essayist 1869–1951Related quotes
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker
(1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist
Individual Liberty (1926), Anarchism and Crime
Ulysses S. Grant
(1822–1885) 18th President of the United States
1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)
Context: The framers of our Constitution firmly believed that a republican government could not endure without intelligence and education generally diffused among the people. The Father of his Country, in his Farewell Address, uses this language: Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.
Richard Dawkins
(1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)
“Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.”
Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt stulti eruditis videntur.
Quintilian
(35–96) ancient Roman rhetor
Book X, Chapter VII, 21
See also: An X among Ys, a Y among Xs
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Gene, on the war activities around Devon.
Source: A Separate Peace (1959), P. 89
Part 4, Section 7
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding
Context: This deficiency in our ideas is not, indeed, perceived in common life, nor are we sensible, that in the most usual conjunctions of cause and effect we are as ignorant of the ultimate principle, which binds them together, as in the most unusual and extraordinary. But this proceeds merely from an illusion of the imagination; and the question is, how far we ought to yield to these illusions. This question is very difficult, and reduces us to a very dangerous dilemma, whichever way we answer it. For if we assent to every trivial suggestion of the fancy; beside that these suggestions are often contrary to each other; they lead us into such errors, absurdities, and obscurities, that we must at last become asham'd of our credulity. Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination, and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compar'd to those angels, whom the scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings. This has already appear'd in so many instances, that we may spare ourselves the trouble of enlarging upon it any farther.
