“Many much-learned men have no intelligence.”
“Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”
“I have long held the opinion that the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.”
“A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.”
“If reason ruled the world would history even exist?”
“Humans beings always do the most intelligent thing…after they’ve tried every stupid alternative and none of them have worked”
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
“The thing that s important to know is that you never know. You re always sort of feeling your way.”
“The barrier during self-improvement is not so much that we hate learning, rather we hate being taught. To learn entails that the knowledge was achieved on one s own accord - it feels great - but to be taught often leaves a feeling of inferiority. Thus it takes a bit of determination and a lot of humility in order for one to fully develop.”
“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”
“But many intelligent people have a sort of bug: they think intelligence is an end in itself. They have one idea in mind: to be intelligent, which is really stupid. And when intelligence takes itself for its own goal, it operates very strangely: the proof that it exists is not to be found in the ingenuity or simplicity of what it produces, but in how obscurely it is expressed.”
“I expect that you must receive top marks at school, young lady. Madeleine smiled as she stirred her tea. There are always rewards for those who state the obvious frequently and with conviction.”
“It s hard to decide who s truly brilliant; it s easier to see who s driven, which in the long run may be more important.”
“Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth.”
“The man of thought who will not act is ineffective; the man of action who will not think is dangerous.”
“The habits of a vigorous mind are born in contending with difficulties.”
“A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.”