Quotes about intellect
A collection of quotes on the topic of intellect, man, human, humanity.
Quotes about intellect
“Intellect takes you to the door, but it doesn't take you into the house.”
Me & Rumi (2004)
Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī - The Book of Intellect and Ignorance.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
Source: I Sonetti Di Michelangelo: The 78 Sonnets of Michelangelo with Verse Translation
“We know not through our intellect but through our experience.”
Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011.
2011
Danny Boyle (The Face, February 2000)
About
Variant: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Source: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
Context: I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.<!-- ¶22
Canto VI, lines 43–46 (tr. Carlyle-Wicksteed).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
Amor che ne la mente mi ragiona
de la mia donna disiosamente...
che lo 'ntelletto sovr'esse disvia.
Trattato Terzo, line 1.
Il Convivio (1304–1307)
“Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.”
Untimely Thoughts (1917-18) (original: Наиболее успешно и могуче будит в нашей душе ее добрые начала сила искусства. Как наука является разумом мира, так искусство — сердце его.)
Context: The good qualities in our soul are most successfully and forcefully awakened by the power of art. Just as science is the intellect of the world, art is its soul.
Cassandra (1860)
Context: Why have women passion, intellect, moral activity — these three — and a place in society where no one of the three can be exercised? Men say that God punishes for complaining. No, but men are angry with misery. They are irritated with women for not being happy. They take it as a personal offence. To God alone may women complain without insulting Him!
Christopher Callahan (October 2000), Music in Medieval Medical Practice: Speculations and Certainties https://symposium.music.org/index.php/40/item/2168-music-in-medieval-medical-practice-speculations-and-certainties#16
De Institutione Musica
Source: 'Letter VII. to Lord John Russell' (30 January 1836), The Letters of Runnymede (1836), pp. 60-61
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Choice http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1602/, st. 1
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)
Source: The Man In The Arena: Speeches and Essays by Theodore Roosevelt
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Variant: Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.”
“Intellect is a part of a good faith. Intellect is the light, the heart is the direction.”
“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
Variant: Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will.
Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”
Source: A General View of Positivism (1848, 1856), p. 24
“Human beings have not been given anything higher than wisdom and intellect.”
Ibn Shu’ba al-Harrani, Tuhaf al-'Uqul, p. 419.
Regarding Knowledge & Wisdom, General
Chi ni hatarakeba kado ga tatsu. Jō ni saosaseba nagasareru. Iji o tōseba kyūkutsu da. Tokaku ni hito no yo wa suminikui.
草枕 Kusamakura, 1906.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“Whoever in discussion adduces authority uses not intellect but rather memory.”
Variant translations:
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
As quoted in The Book of Unusual Quotations (1957) by Rudolf Flesch, p. 12
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting
"The Angel Of The Odd: An Extravaganza".
Der Witzling ist der Bettler im Reich der Geister; er lebt von Almosen, die das Glück ihm zuwirft—von Einfällen.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 67.
“Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.”
Attributed to Averroes, in: John Bartlett (1968) Familiar Qutations. p. 155
Der Verstand und das Herz stehen auf sehr gutem Fuße. Eines vertritt oft die Stelle des andern so vollkommen, dass es schwer ist zu entscheiden, welches von beiden tätig war.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 42.
Part I, Ch. 9: International Policy
1920s, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920)
Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Other
Es gibt Menschen mit leuchtendem und Menschen mit glänzendem Verstande. Die ersten erhellen ihre Umgebung, die zweiten verdunkeln sie.
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 28.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 609
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell in 1912, as quoted in Clark The life of Bertrand Russell (1976), p. 174
1910s
The Poetic Principle (1850)
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 241
Hitherto it has grown out of the secure, non-struggling life of the aristocrat. In future it may be expected to grow out of the secure and not-so-struggling life of whatever citizens are personally able to develop it. There need be no attempt to drag culture down to the level of crude minds. That, indeed, would be something to fight tooth and nail! With economic opportunities artificially regulated, we may well let other interests follow a natural course. Inherent differences in people and in tastes will create different social-cultural classes as in the past—although the relation of these classes to the holding of material resources will be less fixed than in the capitalistic age now closing. All this, of course, is directly contrary to Belknap's rampant Stalinism—but I'm telling you I'm no bolshevik! I am for the preservation of all values worth preserving—and for the maintenance of complete cultural continuity with the Western-European mainstream. Don't fancy that the dethronement of certain purely economic concepts means an abrupt break in that stream. Rather does it mean a return to art impulses typically aristocratic (that is, disinterested, leisurely, non-ulterior) rather than bourgeois.
Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (28 October 1934), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 60-64
Non-Fiction, Letters
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
C. G. Jung. 2014. Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 7: Two Essays in Analytical Psychology. Princeton University Press. p. 71
In Memory Of Major Robert Gregory, st. 12
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Discourse V, pt. 9.
The Idea of a University (1873)
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ifi5KkXig3s "Biblical Series IV: Adam and Eve: Self-Consciousness, Evil, and Death"
As quoted in The Rumi Collection : An Anthology of Translations of Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (2000) by Kabir Helminski
Letter to James F. Morton (18 January 1931), quoted in "H.P. Lovecraft, a Life" by S.T. Joshi, p. 587
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.
Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 199
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 15 - 16
Die Natur baut keine Maschinen, keine Lokomotiven, Eisenbahnen, electric telegraphs, selfacting mules etc. Sie sind Produkte der menschlichen Industrie; natürliches Material, verwandelt in Organe des menschlichen Willens über die Natur oder seiner Betätigung in der Natur. Sie sind von der menschlichen Hand geschaffene Organe des menschlichen Hirns; vergegenständliche Wissenskraft. Die Entwicklung des capital fixe zeigt an, bis zu welchem Grade das allgemeine gesellschaftliche Wissen, knowledge, zur unmittelbaren Produktivkraft geworden ist und daher die Bedingungen des gesellschaftlichen Lebensprozesses selbst unter die Kontrolle des general intellect gekommen, und ihm gemäß umgeschaffen sind.
(1857/58)
Source: Notebook VII, The Chapter on Capital, p. 626.
On Sri Aurobindo, as quoted in " The Sarasvati was more sacred than Ganga http://www.rediff.com/news/report/interview-with-michel-danino/20100522.htm", Rediff (22 May 2010)
“Health and intellect are the two blessings of life.”
Monosticha.
Reflections of a Non-Political Man http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=946 [Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen] (1918)
1910s, The World Movement (1910)
Madame Houpflé, Bk. 2, Ch. 9
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man (1954)
Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 213
In the 1661 translation by Thomas Salusbury: … such are the pure Mathematical sciences, to wit, Geometry and Arithmetick: in which Divine Wisdom knows infinite more propositions, because it knows them all; but I believe that the knowledge of those few comprehended by humane understanding, equalleth the divine, as to the certainty objectivè, for that it arriveth to comprehend the necessity thereof, than which there can be no greater certainty." p. 92 (from the Archimedes Project http://archimedes.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.cgi?page=92;dir=galil_syste_065_en_1661;step=textonly)
In the original Italian: … tali sono le scienze matematiche pure, cioè la geometria e l’aritmetica, delle quali l’intelletto divino ne sa bene infinite proposizioni di piú, perché le sa tutte, ma di quelle poche intese dall’intelletto umano credo che la cognizione agguagli la divina nella certezza obiettiva, poiché arriva a comprenderne la necessità, sopra la quale non par che possa esser sicurezza maggiore." (from the copy at the Italian Wikisource).
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Das Zentrum der geistigen Selbstdisziplin als solcher ist in Zersetzung begriffen. Die Tabus, die den geistigen Rang eines Menschen ausmachen, oftmals sedimentierte Erfahrungen und unartikulierte Erkenntnisse, richten sich stets gegen eigene Regungen, die er verdammen lernte, die aber so stark sind, daß nur eine fraglose und unbefragte Instanz ihnen Einhalt gebieten kann. Was fürs Triebleben gilt, gilt fürs geistige nicht minder: der Maler und Komponist, der diese und jene Farbenzusammenstellung oder Akkordverbindung als kitschig sich untersagt, der Schriftsteller, dem sprachliche Konfigurationen als banal oder pedantisch auf die Nerven gehen, reagiert so heftig gegen sie, weil in ihm selber Schichten sind, die es dorthin lockt. Die Absage ans herrschende Unwesen der Kultur setzt voraus, daß man an diesem selber genug teilhat, um es gleichsam in den eigenen Fingern zucken zu fühlen, daß man aber zugleich aus dieser Teilhabe Kräfte zog, sie zu kündigen. Diese Kräfte, die als solche des individuellen Widerstands in Erscheinung treten, sind darum doch keineswegs selber bloß individueller Art. Das intellektuelle Gewissen, in dem sie sich zusammenfassen, hat ein gesellschaftliches Moment so gut wie das moralische Überich. Es bildet sich an einer Vorstellung von der richtigen Gesellschaft und deren Bürgern. Läßt einmal diese Vorstellung nach—und wer könnte noch blind vertrauend ihr sich überlassen—, so verliert der intellektuelle Drang nach unten seine Hemmung, und aller Unrat, den die barbarische Kultur im Individuum zurückgelassen hat, Halbbildung, sich Gehenlassen, plumpe Vertraulichkeit, Ungeschliffenheit, kommt zum Vorschein. Meist rationalisiert es sich auch noch als Humanität, als den Willen, anderen Menschen sich verständlich zu machen, als welterfahrene Verantwortlichkeit. Aber das Opfer der intellektuellen Selbstdisziplin fällt dem, der es auf sich nimmt, viel zu leicht, als daß man ihm glauben dürfte, daß es eines ist.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 8
Minima Moralia (1951)
Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), pp. 19-20
Source: 1950s, Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (1956), p. 9
1910s, The World Movement (1910)
Disputed
The Philosophy of Composition (published 1846).
Challenge to the Cold War (1985) Vol. 3, Ch. 14
Variant translation: We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.
Conclusion, p. 628
Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921)
III, st. 2
The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933), Vacillation http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1751/
“What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.”
Source: 1930s-1951, Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993), Ch. 9 : Philosophy (chapters 86–93 of the so called Big Typescript), p. 161
Corresponding to TS 213, Kapitel 86
Context: What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden. ]
