90 Quotes About Intellectuals

The bookshelves were lined with Joan Didion and Flannery O'Connor, a small, unexpected collection of musicalia, essay collections on Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. There was a framed poster of an exhibit of romantic landscape paintings in Dresden. Intellectuals had their own thing going, that was for sure.

I like to go to Starbucks and watch the intellectuals. I observe them and their intellectualness. They in turn observe me drinking coffee and being a creeper.

Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.

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 hear a word about the rest

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good

Repetita iuvant. Italy, a land of great saints, poets, sailors, artists, statesmen, businessmen, lawyers, intellectuals, professors, journalists, whores, gangsters, religious parasites and dickheads.

A wise man's goal shouldn't be to say something profound, but to say something useful.

Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate.

What is fascinating is that it is physical. You know, that's one thing about intellectuals, they've proved that you can be absolute brilliant and have no idea what's going on. But on the other hand, the body doesn't lie, as we now know. Nono, it'll be great, because all of those ph.Ds are in there, like, discussing modes of alienation, and we'll be in here quietly humping.