Quotes about intellect
page 6
"Ethan Brand" (1850)
as it is in things that are the proper field of the natural sciences to bow before the dictum of those who say, "Thus saith religion!"
Conclusion : The Moral of this Examination
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
“A pun is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect.”
Popular Fallacies: IX, That the Worst Puns Are the Best.
Last Essays of Elia (1833)
Source: The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science (1999), Ch.11 Only Connect
Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (1983)
“The heart is wiser than the intellect.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 616.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)
Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 11
“Miss Emily had an intellect you could slice logs with.”
Source: Never Let Me Go (2005), Chapter 4, p. 43
A Proper Gentleman, 1977
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 139.
Hugh Alexander Kennedy, quoted in The Westminster Papers: A Monthly Journal of Chess, Whist, Games of Skill and the Drama, Volume X https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=Bs9eAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.RA1-PA40
About
Reverend Thomas Lamb Eliot, in his eulogy, as quoted in John Terry article (ibid.)
About
2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
"Golf Courses for the Homeless"
Jammin' in New York (1992)
Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 141
“In these great times,” Harry Zohn, trans., In These Great Times (Montreal: 1976), p. 74
Gaines is refering here to his 1978 article "Progress in general systems research". In Klir, G. J. (ed.), Applied General Systems Research, New York: Plenum Press, 1978, pp. 3-28.
General systems research: quo vadis? (1979)
The Works of George Santayana p. 65
Scepticism and Animal Faith (1923)
Pitirim Sorokin (1948) The Reconstruction of Humanity http://books.google.nl/books?id=NNq2AAAAIAAJ. Beacon Press p. 330
As translated by Arthur Imerti (1964)
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (1584)
Source: The Heart of Buddhist Meditation (1965), p. 35
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 605.
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity
Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.
Source: 1850s, A treatise on differential equations (1859), p. vi; cited in: Quotations by George Boole http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Quotations/Boole.html, MacTutor History of Mathematics, August 2010.
1830s, The American Scholar http://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm (1837)
Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 63-67
“Man on Bridge” p. 92
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 11 (p. 130)
...</p>
<p>And these same everlasting "Youths" are with us again today, immature, destitute of the slightest experience or even real desire for experience, but writing and talking away about politics, fired by uniforms and badges, and clinging fantastically to some theory or other. There is a social Romanticism of sentimental Communists, a political Romanticism which regards election figures and the intoxication of mass-meeting oratory as deeds, and an economic Romanticism which trickles out from behind the gold theories of sick minds that know nothing of the inner forms of modern economics. They can only feel in the mass, where they can deaden the dull sense of their weakness by multiplying themselves. And this they call the Overcoming of Individualism.</p>
The Hour of Decision (1933)
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 16
Source: 1980s and later, Thought and Wisdom (1982), p. 19; cited in Werner Ulrich (1998) '" C. West Churchman-75 years". in: Systems practice. December 1988, Volume 1, Issue 4, pp 341-350
As quoted in "Ingmar Bergman Confides in Students" http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/08/movies/ingmar-bergman-confides-in-students.html New York Times, May 7, 1981.
“It is by character and not by intellect the world is won.”
Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 1 : D'Alembert: The Thinker, p. 31
Letter to Franz Rott (December 1787), from The collected correspondence, and London notebooks of Joseph Haydn, ed. H.C. Robbins Landon (1959), p. 73
A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)
Source: Happiness and Contemplation (1958), p. 58
Source: "Kant on the Rational Instability of Atheism" (2006), pp. 63-64
Translation from: Albert Carao (1919-1917) http://illusioncity.net/albert-caraco/ at illusioncity.net by Snake June 17, 2012
Ma confession (1975)
Quote (July 1905); from: Diari 1898-1918, 2012 (citato), paragrafo 660; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee Part Three', : 'Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist' http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910
From The Goad, the Flames, the Arrows and the Mirror of the love of God
Section I, "Of the First Principles of Government, and the different kinds of Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)
A Choice of Gods (1972)
Context: I have become a student of the sky and know all the clouds there are and have firmly fixed in mind the various hues of blue that the sky can show — the washed-out, almost invisible blue of a hot, summer noon; the soft robin's egg, sometimes almost greenish blue of a late springtime evening, the darker, almost violet blue of fall. I have become a connoisseur of the coloring that the leaves take on in autumn and I know all the voices and the moods of the woods and river valley. I have, in a measure, entered into communion with nature, and in this wise have followed in the footsteps of Red Cloud and his people, although I am sure that their understanding and their emotions are more fine-tuned than mine are. I have seen, however, the roll of seasons, the birth and death of leaves, the glitter of the stars on more nights than I can number and from all this as from nothing else I have gained a sense of a purpose and an orderliness which it does not seem to me can have stemmed from accident alone.
It seems to me, thinking of it, that there must be some universal plan which set in motion the orbiting of the electrons about the nucleus and the slower, more majestic orbit of the galaxies about one another to the very edge of space. There is a plan, it seems to me, that reaches out of the electron to the rim of the universe and what this plan may be or how it came about is beyond my feeble intellect. But if we are looking for something on which to pin our faith — and, indeed, our hope — the plan might well be it. I think we have thought too small and have been too afraid...
Ch 24
A. W. Bulloch, in The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (1989), edited by P. E. Easterling and B. M. W. Knox, vol. 1, part 4, p. 9
Criticism
volume II, chapter VII: "The 'Origin of Species'", pages 311-312 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=327&itemID=F1452.2&viewtype=image; letter http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2814 to Asa Gray (22 May 1860)
"Ichneumonidæ" sometimes altered to "parasitic wasps" in paraphrases of this passage.
Paraphrased as "I feel most deeply that this whole question of Creation is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton! Let each man hope and believe what he can." Elbert Hubbard, Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists (1916) page 197 http://books.google.com/books?id=nYArAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA198&f=false. <!-- Sometimes claimed that this appeared in Illustrated London News (21 April 1862), but a full search of every issue of Illustrated London News (1842–2003) through Gale Digital News Vault shows that this passage never appeared. -->
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
Context: With respect to the theological view of the question. This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical.
“It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!”
A comedic musical tribute to Doctor Who made in November 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9P4SxtphJ4, which was not aired for legal reasons, but "leaked" to the internet, and finally aired with legal clearance on Late Late Show (6 January 2011) http://geeksofdoom.com/2011/01/07/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-musical-finally-airs/The · Transcript of lyrics (with some minor errors), online at Forbes (1 December 2010) http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2010/12/01/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-song/
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)
Context: In 1963 the BBC premiered a show about an alien
Who traveled through space and time to combat the powers of evil. …
The show has been running in Britain almost fifty years,
with many different actors in the role of The Doctor. …
One thing is consistent though and this is why the show is so beloved by geeks and nerds —
It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
And if there is any hope for any of us in this giant explosion in which we inhabit then surely that’s it:
Intellect and romance triumph over brute force and cynicism! <!-- Right Doctor?
Science - The Endless Frontier (1945)
Context: Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown. Freedom of inquiry must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science...
Education (1902)
Context: I am not of those who believe in lackadaisical methods. On the contrary, I advocate a vigorous, thorough, exact mental training which shall fit the mind to expand upon and grasp large things and yet properly to perceive in their just relation the significance of small ones to discriminate accurately as to quantity and quality and thus to develop individual judgment, capacity and independence.
But at the same time I am of those who believe that gentleness is a greater, surer power than force, and that sympathy is a safer power by far than is intellect. Therefore would I train the individual sympathies as carefully in all their delicate warmth and tenuity as I would develop the mind in alertness, poise and security.
Nor am I of those who despise dreamers. For the world would be at the level of zero were it not for its dreamers gone and of today. He who dreamed of democracy, far back in a world of absolutism, was indeed heroic, and we of today awaken to the wonder of his dream.
The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect — its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions — its purpose being pleasure. A work of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the Intellect, and a work of Science will also indirectly appeal to the Feelings; nevertheless a poem on the stars and a treatise on astronomy have distinct aims and distinct methods. But having recognised the broadly-marked differences, we are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. Logic and Imagination belong equally to both. It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities.
Book I, Ch. 1: The Eve of the War
The War of the Worlds (1898)
Context: No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same... Yet, across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
First Ennead, Book VI, as translated by Thomas Taylor, The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries: A Dissertation https://books.google.com/books?id=vEt0LaOue8IC (1891) pp. 43-44.
The First Ennead (c. 250)
Chap. IV.
The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788)
Introduction<!-- pp. 3-4 -->
The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry Into Its Origin and Growth (1921)
Context: Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three of four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found ways to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not come up against impassable barriers?... Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass.
Upon The Mother Of The Gods (c. 362-363)
Context: Let nobody suppose me to say that all these things were done and happened formerly without the gods themselves knowing what they meant to do; or as though they were chastising their own faults. The causes of things that be, the ancients (whether with the gods to guide them, or discovering them by their unassisted efforts, but better to say seeking them out under the guidance of the gods), when they had discovered them, wrapped up the same in strange fables, in order that the fiction, being detected through its own extravagance and obscurity, might draw us on to the investigation of the Truth. For the vulgar, incapable of reasoning, derive sufficient benefit from what is conveyed by means of symbols; whilst to those of superior intellect, the truth respecting the gods will then only be serviceable, when they through diligent research shall find it out and lay hold thereof: whilst they are reminded by means of dark legends that it is their duty to inquire; and that they may advance to the end, as to the summit of the thing, after they have discerned it by means of such research; not so much out of respect and confidence in the judgment of others, as in the exertion of one's own understanding upon other objects.
“The intellect has a sharp eye for methods and tools, but is blind to ends and values.”
"The Goal of Human Existence" (1943)
1950s, Out of My Later Years (1950)
Context: And certainly we should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve; and it is not fastidious in its choice of a leader. This characteristic is reflected in the qualities of its priests, the intellectuals. The intellect has a sharp eye for methods and tools, but is blind to ends and values. So it is no wonder that this fatal blindness is handed on from old to young and today involves a whole generation.
Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 164
Context: Two friends went into an orchard. One of them possessing much worldly wisdom, immediately began to count the mango trees there and the number of mangoes each tree bore, and to estimate what might be the approximate value of the whole orchard. His companion went to the owner, made friends with him, and then, quietly going into a tree, began at his host's desire to pluck the fruits and eat them. Whom do you consider to be the wiser of the two? Eat mangoes. It will satisfy your hunger. What is the good of counting the trees and leaves and making calculations? The vain man of intellect busies himself with finding out the "why" and "wherefore" of creation, while the humble man of wisdom makes friends with the Creator and enjoys His gift of supreme bliss.
"Likeness to God", an address in Providence, Rhode Island (1828)
Context: I see the marks of God in the heavens and the earth, but how much more in a liberal intellect, in magnanimity, in unconquerable rectitude, in a philanthropy which forgives every wrong, and which never despairs of the cause of Christ and human virtue. I do and I must reverence human nature... I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.
Book II, Ch. IV, pp. 113-115.
Physics
" The Mystic http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Early-Poems-of-Alfred-Lord-Tennyson9.html" (1830)
Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 8 "The Power-House"
Context: I am a sceptic about most things... but, believe me, I have my own worship. I venerate the intellect of man. I believe in its undreamed-of possibilities, when it grows free like an oak in the forest and is not dwarfed in a flower-pot. From that allegiance I have never wavered. That is the God I have never forsworn.
The Crosswicks Journal, The Irrational Season (1977)
Context: We rebel against the impossible. I sense a wish in some professional religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable. But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a comprehensible God is no more than an idol.
Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker (2001) by Clifford Mead and Thomas Hager.
1990s
Context: When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect — but do not believe him. Never put your trust into anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel laureate — may be wrong. The world progresses, year by year, century by century, as the members of the younger generation find out what was wrong among the things that their elders said. So you must always be skeptical — always think for yourself.
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17
Context: I do not ascribe to God ignorance of anything or any kind of weakness; I hold that Divine Providence is related and closely connected with the intellect, because Providence can only proceed from an intelligent being, from a being that is itself the most perfect Intellect. Those creatures, therefore, which receive part of that intellectual influence, will become subject to the action of Providence in the same proportion as they are acted upon by the intellect. This theory is in accordance with reason and with the teaching of the Scripture, whilst the other theories previously mentioned either exaggerate Divine Providence of detract from it.
“We do not go around and discard the intellect, but we must go through and beyond it.”
Section 1.16 <!-- p. 43 -->
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
Context: It is all, as usual, paradox. I have to use what intellect I have in order to write books, but I write the kind of books I do in order that I may try to set down glimpses of things that are on the other side of the intellect. We do not go around and discard the intellect, but we must go through and beyond it.
Founding Address (1876)
Context: The moral improvement of the nations and their individual components has not kept pace with the march of intellect and the advance of industry. Before the assaults of criticism many ancient strongholds of faith have given way, and doubt is fast spreading even into circles where its expression is forbidden. Morality, long accustomed to the watchful tutelage of faith, finds this connection loosened or severed, while no new protector has arisen to champion her rights, no new instruments been created to enforce her lessons among the people. As a consequence we behold a general laxness in regard to obligations the most sacred and dear. An anxious unrest, a fierce craving desire for gain has taken possession of the commercial world, and in instances no longer rare the most precious and permanent goods of human life have been madly sacrificed in the interests of momentary enrichment.
Letter II
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: I know but one man, of more than miserable intellect, who in these modern times has dared defend eternal punishment on the score of justice, and that is Leibnitz; a man who, if I know him rightly, chose the subject from its difficulty as an opportunity for the display of his genius, and cared so little for the truth that his conclusions did not cost his heart a pang, or wring a single tear from him. And what does Leibnitz say? That sin, forsooth, though itself be only finite, yet, because it is against an Infinite Being, contracts a character of infinity, and so must be infinitely punished. It is odd that the clever Leibnitz should not have seen that a finite punishment, inflicted by the same Infinite Being, would itself of course contract the same character of infinity.
“Did ever the history of the intellect so little conceal so much?”
Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961), p.6
1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Stump Orator (May 1, 1850)
Context: If the young aspirant is not rich enough for Parliament, and is deterred by the basilisks or otherwise from entering on Law or Church, and cannot altogether reduce his human intellect to the beaverish condition, or satisfy himself with the prospect of making money,—what becomes of him in such case, which is naturally the case of very many, and ever of more? In such case there remains but one outlet for him, and notably enough that too is a talking one: the outlet of Literature, of trying to write Books. Since, owing to preliminary basilisks, want of cash, or superiority to cash, he cannot mount aloft by eloquent talking, let him try it by dexterous eloquent writing. Here happily, having three fingers, and capital to buy a quire of paper, he can try it to all lengths and in spite of all mortals: in this career there is happily no public impediment that can turn him back; nothing but private starvation—which is itself a finis or kind of goal—can pretend to hinder a British man from prosecuting Literature to the very utmost, and wringing the final secret from her: "A talent is in thee; No talent is in thee." To the British subject who fancies genius may be lodged in him, this liberty remains; and truly it is, if well computed, almost the only one he has.
The Stark Munro Letters (1894)
Context: The more we progress the more we tend to progress. We advance not in arithmetical but in geometrical progression. We draw compound interest on the whole capital of knowledge and virtue which has been accumulated since the dawning of time. Some eighty thousand years are supposed to have existed between paleolithic and neolithic man. Yet in all that time he only learned to grind his flint stones instead of chipping them. But within our father's lives what changes have there not been? The railway and the telegraph, chloroform and applied electricity. Ten years now go further than a thousand then, not so much on account of our finer intellects as because the light we have shows us the way to more. Primeval man stumbled along with peering eyes, and slow, uncertain footsteps. Now we walk briskly towards our unknown goal.
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: The waste of that immense force in stopping the planets in their grand courses, for the purpose claimed, would be like using a Krupp gun to destroy an insect to which a single drop of water is “an unbounded world.” How is it possible for men of ordinary intellect, not only to endorse such ignorant falsehoods, but to malign those who do not? Can anything be more debasing to the intellect of man than a belief in the astronomy of the Bible?
Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Science... has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view. She catalogues her elements and records her laws indifferent as to what purpose may be shown forth by them, and constructs her theories quite careless of their bearing on human anxieties and fates. Though the scientist may individually nourish a religion, and be a theist in his irresponsible hours, the days are over when it could be said that for Science herself the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Our solar system, with its harmonies, is seen now as but one passing case of a certain sort of moving equilibrium in the heavens, realized by a local accident in an appalling wilderness of worlds where no life can exist. In a span of time which as a cosmic interval will count but as an hour, it will have ceased to be. The Darwinian notion of chance production, and subsequent destruction, speedy or deferred, applies to the largest as well as to the smallest facts. It is impossible, in the present temper of the scientific imagination, to find in the driftings of the cosmic atoms, whether they work on the universal or on the particular scale, anything but a kind of aimless weather, doing and undoing, achieving no proper history, and leaving no result. Nature has no one distinguishable ultimate tendency with which it is possible to feel a sympathy. In the vast rhythm of her processes... she appears to cancel herself. The books of natural theology which satisfied the intellects of our grandfathers seem to us quite grotesque, representing, as they did, a God who conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants. The God whom science recognizes must be a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business. He cannot accommodate his processes to the convenience of individuals. The bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles—epiphenomena, as Clifford, I believe, ingeniously called them; their destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events.
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17
Context: I do not ascribe to God ignorance of anything or any kind of weakness; I hold that Divine Providence is related and closely connected with the intellect, because Providence can only proceed from an intelligent being, from a being that is itself the most perfect Intellect. Those creatures, therefore, which receive part of that intellectual influence, will become subject to the action of Providence in the same proportion as they are acted upon by the intellect. This theory is in accordance with reason and with the teaching of the Scripture, whilst the other theories previously mentioned either exaggerate Divine Providence of detract from it.
A comedic musical tribute to Doctor Who made in November 2010 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9P4SxtphJ4, which was not aired for legal reasons, but "leaked" to the internet, and finally aired with legal clearance on Late Late Show (6 January 2011) http://geeksofdoom.com/2011/01/07/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-musical-finally-airs/The · Transcript of lyrics (with some minor errors), online at Forbes (1 December 2010) http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2010/12/01/craig-fergusons-doctor-who-song/
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014)
Context: In 1963 the BBC premiered a show about an alien
Who traveled through space and time to combat the powers of evil. …
The show has been running in Britain almost fifty years,
with many different actors in the role of The Doctor. …
One thing is consistent though and this is why the show is so beloved by geeks and nerds —
It's all about the triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
Intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism!
And if there is any hope for any of us in this giant explosion in which we inhabit then surely that’s it:
Intellect and romance triumph over brute force and cynicism! <!-- Right Doctor?
From a letter to Harold Preece (c. December 1928)
Letters
Context: I could name all day, those women I deem great in Greece alone and the records would scarcely be complete. And what of Joan of Arc and Emma Goldman? Kate Richards O’Hare and Sarah Bernhardt? Katherine the Great and Elizabeth Barrett Browning? H. D. and Sara Teasdale? Isibella of Spain who pawned her gems that Columbus might sail, and Edna St. Vincent Millay? And that queen, Marie, I think her name was, of some small province - Hungary I believe - who fought Prussia and Russia so long and so bitterly. And Rome – oh, the list is endless there, also - most of them were glorified harlots but better be a glorified harlot than a drab and moral drone, such as the text books teach us woman should be. Woman have always been the inspiration of men, and just as there are thousands of unknown great ones among men, there have been countless women whose names have never been blazoned across the stars, but who have inspired men on to glory. And as for their fickleness – as long as men write the literature of the world, they will rant about the unfaithfulness of the fair sex, forgetting their own infidelities. Men are as fickle as women. Women have been kept in servitude so long that if they lack in discernment and intellect it is scarcely their fault.
My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: The earth, rotating at the rate of one thousand miles an hour, was stopped. The motion of this vast globe would have instantly been changed into heat. It has been calculated by one of the greatest scientists of the present day that to stop the earth would generate as much heat as could be produced by burning a world as large as this of solid coal. And yet, all this force was expended for the paltry purpose of defeating a few poor barbarians. The employment of so much force for the accomplishment of so insignificant an object would be as useless as bringing all the intellect of a great man to bear in answering the arguments of the clergymen of San Francisco.
“The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect.”
Source: Social Problems (1883), Ch. 1 : The Increasing Importance of Social Questions
Context: The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice. For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.
Collected Writings volume xxviii pages 21-22
Context: The boys, who cannot grow up to adult human nature, are beating the prophets of the ancient race — Marx, Freud, Einstein — who have been tearing at our social, personal and intellectual roots, tearing with an objectivity which to the healthy animal seems morbid, depriving everything, as it seems, of the warmth of natural feeling. What traditional retort have the schoolboys but a kick in the pants?...
To our generation Einstein has been made to become a double symbol — a symbol of the mind travelling in the cold regions of space, and a symbol of the brave and generous outcast, pure in heart and cheerful of spirit. Himself a schoolboy, too, but the other kind — with ruffled hair, soft hands and a violin. See him as he squats on Cromer beach doing sums, Charlie Chaplin with the brow of Shakespeare...
So it is not an accident that the Nazi lads vent a particular fury against him. He does truly stand for what they most dislike, the opposite of the blond beast — intellectualist, individualist, supernationalist, pacifist, inky, plump... How should they know the glory of the free-ranging intellect and soft objective sympathy to whom money and violence, drink and blood and pomp, mean absolutely nothing? Yet Albert and the blond beast make up the world between them. If either cast the other out, life is diminished in its force. When the barbarians destroy the ancient race as witches, when they refuse to scale heaven on broomsticks, they may be dooming themselves to sink back into the clods which bore them.
'This promise constitutes the heart of my Christian beliefs and my call to natural-scientific research: we will attain to knowledge of the universe through the spirit of truth, and thereby to understanding of our being one with the deepest, most comprehensive reality, God.'
Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality
The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: An orator whose purpose is to persuade men must speak the things they wish to hear; an orator, whose purpose is to move men, must also avoid disturbing the emotional effect by any obtrusion of intellectual antagonism; but an author whose purpose is to instruct men, who appeals to the intellect, must be careless of their opinions, and think only of truth. It will often be a question when a man is or is not wise in advancing unpalateable opinions, or in preaching heresies; but it can never be a question that a man should be silent if unprepared to speak the truth as he conceives it. Deference to popular opinion is one great source of bad writing, and is all the more disastrous because the deference is paid to some purely hypothetical requirement. When a man fails to see the truth of certain generally accepted views, there is no law compelling him to provoke animosity by announcing his dissent. He may be excused if he shrink from the lurid glory of martyrdom; he may be justified in not placing himself in a position of singularity. He may even be commended for not helping to perplex mankind with doubts which he feels to be founded on limited and possibly erroneous investigation. But if allegiance to truth lays no stern command upon him to speak out his immature dissent, it does lay a stern command not to speak out hypocritical assent.
Book VI: Ch. 8: Comparison of Washington and Bonaparte.
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
Context: A degree of silence envelops Washington’s actions; he moved slowly; one might say that he felt charged with future liberty, and that he feared to compromise it. It was not his own destiny that inspired this new species of hero: it was that of his country; he did not allow himself to enjoy what did not belong to him; but from that profound humility what glory emerged! Search the woods where Washington’s sword gleamed: what do you find? Tombs? No; a world! Washington has left the United States behind for a monument on the field of battle.
Bonaparte shared no trait with that serious American: he fought amidst thunder in an old world; he thought about nothing but creating his own fame; he was inspired only by his own fate. He seemed to know that his project would be short, that the torrent which falls from such heights flows swiftly; he hastened to enjoy and abuse his glory, like fleeting youth. Following the example of Homer’s gods, in four paces he reached the ends of the world. He appeared on every shore; he wrote his name hurriedly in the annals of every people; he threw royal crowns to his family and his generals; he hurried through his monuments, his laws, his victories. Leaning over the world, with one hand he deposed kings, with the other he pulled down the giant, Revolution; but, in eliminating anarchy, he stifled liberty, and ended by losing his own on his last field of battle.
Each was rewarded according to his efforts: Washington brings a nation to independence; a justice at peace, he falls asleep beneath his own roof in the midst of his compatriots’ grief and the veneration of nations.
Bonaparte robs a nation of its independence: deposed as emperor, he is sent into exile, where the world’s anxiety still does not think him safely enough imprisoned, guarded by the Ocean. He dies: the news proclaimed on the door of the palace in front of which the conqueror had announced so many funerals, neither detains nor astonishes the passer-by: what have the citizens to mourn?
Washington’s Republic lives on; Bonaparte’s empire is destroyed. Washington and Bonaparte emerged from the womb of democracy: both of them born to liberty, the former remained faithful to her, the latter betrayed her.
Washington acted as the representative of the needs, the ideas, the enlightened men, the opinions of his age; he supported, not thwarted, the stirrings of intellect; he desired only what he had to desire, the very thing to which he had been called: from which derives the coherence and longevity of his work. That man who struck few blows because he kept things in proportion has merged his existence with that of his country: his glory is the heritage of civilisation; his fame has risen like one of those public sanctuaries where a fecund and inexhaustible spring flows.
The Other World (1657)
Context: Tell me, is the cabbage you mention not as much a creature of God as you? Do you not both have God and potentiality for your father and mother? For all eternity has God not occupied His intellect with the cabbage's birth as well as yours? It also seems that He has necessarily provided more for the birth of the vegetable than for the thinking being... Will anyone say that we are born in the image of the Sovereign Being, while cabbages are not? Even if it were true, we have effaced that resemblance by soiling our soul in the way in which we resembled Him, because there is nothing more contrary to God than sin. If our soul, then, is no longer His image, we still do not resemble Him by our hands, feet, mouth, face and ears any more than the cabbage does by its leaves, flowers, stem, heart or head.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)
Context: It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.
Cassandra (1860)
Context: Passion, intellect, moral activity — these three have never been satisfied in a woman. In this cold and oppressive conventional atmosphere, they cannot be satisfied. To say more on this subject would be to enter into the whole history of society, of the present state of civilisation.
शिक्षा (Education)
Context: In the fields of life there isn't any geometry. Here if whole is taken out from the whole then whole itself remains. Inside one is substance, inside atom is the world. Science cannot find everything and our psychological studies end within the darkness of intellect. This is why no teacher can teach.
The Highest of the High (1953)
Context: Mere intellectuals can never understand me through their intellect. If I am the Highest of the High, it becomes impossible for the intellect to gauge me, nor is it possible for my ways to be fathomed by the limited human mind.
I am not to be attained by those who, loving me, stand reverently by in rapt admiration. I am not for those who ridicule me and point at me with contempt. To have a crowd of tens of millions flocking around me is not what I am for.
Source: The Path to Enlightenment is not a Highway, 1996, p.65
World Design Science Decade 1965-1975 Phase I (1965), Document 3 : Comprehensive Thinking, "Venus Proximity Day", p. 33 http://challenge.bfi.org/sites/challenge.bfi.org/files/pdf_files/wdsd_phase1_doc3.pdf
1960s
Context: One of my working assumptions which has been proven successful so often as seemingly to qualify it as a reliable tenet is that A problem adequately stated is a problem solved theoretically and immediately, and therefore subsequently to be solved, realistically. Others have probably stated the principle in many ways. The assumption is that the inevitability of a solution's realization is inherent in the interaction of human intellect and the constantly transformative evolution of physical universe. At first the, only subconsciously apprehended, approaching confluences of complex events make themselves known intuitively within the intellectual weather. Then comes a gradually awakening consciousness of the presence of new families of differentiating-out challenging concepts of every day prominence. It is with these randomly patterning families of separate concepts that evolution is about to deal integratively. As a now specific unitary problem it may be disposed of effectively when and if that unified problem becomes "adequately stated" and thereby comprehensibly solvable.
that is to say, intentional.
Source: Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966), p. 54