Intellectual Cowardice Quotes

Intellectual cowardice is only one of the problems of the academic community. Fort rubbed their
noses in the swill generated by their gibberish and illiteracy. It was no secret then or now that
academic publications are designed to protect the inept and to conceal ignorance. People with
nothing to say, who even lack the ability to say nothing, can hide behind the academic method for a
lifetime. ~ John A. Keel

In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves. ~ George Orwell

Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers. ~ Lionel Trilling

Keynes vs Hayek? Friedman vs Krugman? Those are the wrong intellectual debates. Its you vs. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, You vs. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO. And you are losing ... ~ Barry Ritholtz

Stanford University's psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues have discovered that what you believe about intellectual ability - whether you think it's a fixed gift, or an earned ability that can be developed - makes a difference to your behavior, persistence, and performance. Students who see ability as fixed - as a gift - are more vulnerable to setbacks and difficulties. And stereotypes, as Dweck rightly points out, "are stories about gifts - who has them and who doesn't." Dweck and her colleagues are shown that when students are encouraged to see math ability as something that grows with effort - pointing out, for example, that the brain forges new connections and develops better ability every time they practice a task - grades improve and gender gaps diminish (relative to groups given control interventions). ~ Cordelia Fine

An intellectual carrot - the mind boggles. ~ James Arness

Largely excluded from the white masculine political sphere, black male scholars established intellectual organizations where they could not only distance themselves from women but also perform a masculinity parallel to that established by white male scholars. ~ Deborah Gray White

Now we've a real intellectual impasse. Our reason, which is supposed to make things more intelligible, seems to be making them less intelligible, and when reason thus defeats its own purpose something has to be changed in the structure of our reason itself. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

The best conversation is rare. Society seems to have agreed to treat fictions as realities, and realities as fictions; and the simple lover of truth, especially if on very high grounds, as a religious or intellectual seeker, finds himself a stranger and alien. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

God, or rather the fiction of God, is thus the sanction and the intellectual and moral cause of all the slavery on earth, and the liberty of men will not be complete, unless it will have completely annihilated the inauspicious fiction of a heavenly master. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to take it. He did not feel it. In this place you could not feel anything, except the pain and the foreknowledge of pain. Besides, was it possible, when you were actually suffering it, to wish for any reason whatever that your own pain should increase? But that question was not answerable yet. ~ George Orwell

Many of the innovations in science and philosophy have come from unbelievers, some of whom died for their 'unbeliefs.' Without unbelief, we might well be living in the Dark Ages or at least in the intellectual equivalent of that time.

In past centuries many theists savagely attacked atheists on the ground that someone without a belief in God must be a moral 'monster,' who would permit any action. This argument is rarely heard today, as the number of people who are openly atheists has become so large that its falsity is self-evident. Atheists do have a moral code to guide them. It is usually based upon the Golden Rule, plus a variety of utilitarian reasons, although there are a number of other possible systems. Rather than being immoral, most atheists are extremely moral.

There are a large number of people who can and do manage to lead decent upright lives with no use for a belief in God as a guide. Atheists do not care whether others believe as they do. They do ask, however, for the right to believe as they wish .... ~ Gordon Stein

Ninety percent of the difficulty in your intellectual life would never have happened if you just had better taste. ~ Terence McKenna

Cowardice, when done correctly, can be its own kind of bravery. ~ Paul Neilan

Jackson Wilkes died of a heart explosion yesterday. Not just an attack, a literal explosion, showing that, even in cowardice, he was always destined to be great. ~ A.J. Bauers

Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth.

In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. ~ George Orwell

You're saying Stevie's problems are because we taught him to believe in Santa Claus?" asked Step, incredulous. "On the contrary. I think Santa Claus is, by and large, quite beneficial, for when the child is finally allowed - or forced - to recognize the nonexistence of Santa Claus, then the child is able to go through the vital intellectual process of reconstructing reality in light of new evidence, complete with back-forming new stories to account for past events. This prepares the child for many other disillusionments and gives her vital and well-supported experience in maintaining her grip on reality independent of the stories told to her at any given time." "So Santa Claus is good," said Step. "Santa Claus is usually not maladaptive," said Dr. Weeks, ~ Orson Scott Card

Healing requires far more of us than just the participation of our intellectual and even our emotional resources. And it certainly demands that we do more than look backwards at the dead-end archives of our past. Healing is, by definition, taking a process of disintegration of life and transforming into a process of return to life. ~ Caroline Myss

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

We take children from their parents because these cannot give them an intellectual training. So far, good. But we fail to give them that training in character which parents alone can give. Home influence, as Grace Aguilar conceived it - where has it gone? It strikes me that this is a grave danger for the future. ~ Norman Douglas

Freedom would mean rest, artistic achievement, the intellectual fulfilment of my being. ~ Pessoa, Fernando

There is such a polarized discussion of economics among people like analysts, columnists, bloggers; often, they end up just saying that views other than their own should not even be discussed. I find that frustrating. There is no intellectual progress without considering lots and lots of different views. ~ Adam Davidson

What, then, is the hallmark of science? Do we have to capitulate and agree that a scientific revolution is just an irrational change in commit­ment, that it is a religious conversion? Tom Kuhn, a distinguished Amer­ican philosopher of science, arrived at this conclusion after discovering the naivety of Popper's falsificationism. But if Kuhn is right, then there is no explicit demarcation between science and pseudoscience, no distinc­tion between scientific progress and intellectual decay, there is no objec­tive standard of honesty. But what criteria can he then offer to demarcate scientific progress from intellectual degeneration? ~ Imre Lakatos

Eating words and listening to them rumbling in the gut is how a writer learns the acid and alkali of language. It is a process at the same time physical and intellectual. The writer has to hear language until she develops perfect pitch, but she also has to feel language, to know it sweat and dry. The writer finds the words are visceral, and when she can eat them, wear them, and enter them like tunnels she discovers the alleged separation between word and meaning between writer and word is theoretical. ~ Jeanette Winterson

As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom, which we Americans enjoy, is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny. ~ Walt Disney Company

There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term 'conservatism' can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country's future. ~ Noam Chomsky

This is why you are told "Let the weak man say, 'I am strong'." (Joel 3:10), for by his assumption, the cause-substance - 'I AM' - is rearranged and must, therefore, manifest that which its rearrangement affirms. This principle governs every aspect of your life, be it social, financial, intellectual, or spiritual. 'I AM' is that reality to which, whatever happens, we must turn for an explanation of the phenomena of life. It is I AM's concept of itself that determines the form and scenery of its existence. Everything depends upon its attitude towards itself; that which it will not affirm as true of itself cannot awaken in its world. ~ Neville Goddard

Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the source of all progress, both moral and intellectual. They have been unpopular, as was natural. ~ Bertrand Russell

In a certain sense, these people have a better appreciation of the Church and of Catholicism than many Catholics have: an appreciation which is detached and intellectual and objective. But they never come into the Church. They stand and starve in the doors of the banquet -- the banquet to which they surely realize that they are invited -- while those more poor, more stupid, less gifted, less educated, sometimes even less virtuous than they, enter in and are filled at those tremendous tables. ~ Thomas Merton

Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another's work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt. ~ Peter Medawar

In its artless cruelty, Dallas is superior to any "intelligent" critique that can be made of it. That is why intellectual snobberymeets its match here. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. It proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action into violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth-telling to sentimental platitude. ~ Karen Haber

Nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger ... Between violence and cowardly flight I can only prefer violence to cowardice. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Your physical, mental and intellectual resources
- continually growing and changing -
are your personal capital. ~ Brian Tracy

Insofar as theology is an attempt to define and clarify intellectual positions, it is apt to lead to discussion, to differences of opinion, even to controversy, and hence to be divisive. And this has had a strong tendency to dampen serious discussion of theological issues in most groups, and hence to strengthen the general anti-intellectual bias ... ~ Bill Vaughan

What we call cowardice is often just another name for being taken by surprise, and courage is seldom any better than simply being well prepared. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I was actually already doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience when September 11 happened. 'The End Of Faith' is essentially what September 11 did to my intellectual career at that moment. ~ Sam Harris

The 'We Have Overcome' generation has run out of intellectual creativity but refuses to leave the political stage. ~ Manning Marable

It is a sneaking piece of cowardice for authors to put feigned names to their works, as if, like bastards of their brain, they were afraid to own them. ~ Desiderius Erasmus