Intellectual Sophistication Quotes

God is not an alternative to science as an explanation, he is not to be understood merely as a God of the gaps, he is the ground of all explanation: it is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scientific or otherwise. It is important to stress this because influential authors such as Richard Dawkins will insist on conceiving of God as an explanatory alternative to science – an idea that is nowhere to be found in theological reflection of any depth. Dawkins is therefore tilting at a windmill - dismissing a concept of God that no serious thinker believes in anyway. Such activity is not necessarily to be regarded as a mark of intellectual sophistication. ~ John C. Lennox

The best way to measure the loss of intellectual sophistication - this "nerdification," to put it bluntly - is in the growing disappearance of sarcasm, as mechanic minds take insults a bit too literally. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

That afternoon I came to understand that one of the deepest purposes of intellectual sophistication is to provide distance between us and our most disturbing personal truths and gnawing fears. ~ Richard Russo

I think teenagers bring a lot of intellectual sophistication. They're wrestling with big questions. It's just that, a lot of times they do that separately from adults. ~ John Green

But interpretation invariably reveals more about the interpreter than about the interpreted. The gap between intention and interpretation is always rife with wrongs, especially when writer and reader occupy vastly different strata of emotional maturity and intellectual sophistication. ~ Maria Popova

In the "free world" (Natopolis) the centres of ideological orthodoxy are rarely defined. The diversity of intellectual trends within the orthodoxy, the indeterminate and shifting character of its boundaries, the existence of real centres of dissent (and the licence given to even Stalinist opposition)--all these conspire to create the central illusion of "Natopolitan" culture, that there is in fact no orthodoxy but only an infinite variety of opinions among which one is free to choose. ~ E.P. Thompson

What has made the day so perfect ? To begin with , it is a pattern of freedom. It's setting has not been cramped in space or time. An island, curiously enough, gives a limitless feeling or both. Nor has the day been limited in kinds of activity. It has a natural balance of physical, intellectual and social life. It has an easy unforced rhythm. Work is not deformed by pressure. Relationship is not strangled by claims. Intimacy is tempered by lightness of touch. We have moved through our day like dancers not needing to touch more than lightly because we were instinctively moving to the same rhythm. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can't explain it. They really can't translate feeling because they're not part of it. That's why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It's not. It's feeling. ~ Bill Evans

I've never professed to be an intellectual. I don't try to be. ~ William O'Neill

The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable pre-condition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accords with their personal characteristics and abilities. ~ Albert Einstein

We had a certain kind of really big prestige among, I suppose not just intellectual folk, but a sort of nice middle class intelligent folk of a very urban nature. ~ Adolph Green

Loud, stupid and overeating will suffice as long as we also have the funny, the fierce and the intellectual ~ Denis Leary

You see, Dr. Stadler, people don't want to think. And the deeper they get into trouble, the less they want to think. But by some sort of instinct, they feel that they ought to and it makes them feel guilty. So they'll bless and follow anyone who gives them a justification for not thinking. Anyone who makes a virtue - a highly intellectual virtue - out of what they know to be their sin, their weakness and their guilt. ~ Ayn Rand

Everybody should read fiction ... I don't think serious fiction is written for a few people. I think we live in a stupid culture that won't educate its people to read these things. It would be a much more interesting place if it would. And it's not just that mechanics and plumbers don't read literary fiction, it's that doctors and lawyers don't read literary fiction. It has nothing to do with class, it has to do with an anti-intellectual culture that doesn't trust art. ~ Percival Everett

Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well ... Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us ... I could light myself ... that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting ... God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive. ~ Jacques Lusseyran

The game of chess is the most fascinating and intellectual pastime which the wisdom of antiquity has bequeathed to us. ~ Howard Staunton

I remember once, in talking to Mr. Burne-Jones about modern science, his saying to me, 'the more materialistic science becomes, the more angels shall I paint: their wings are my protest in favour of the immortality of the soul.' But these are the intellectual speculations that underlie art. Where in the arts themselves are we to find that breadth of human sympathy which is the condition of all noble work; where in the arts are we to look for what Mazzini would call the social ideas as opposed to the merely personal ideas? By virtue of what claim do I demand for the artist the love and loyalty of the men and women of the world? I think I can answer that. Whatever spiritual message an artist brings to his aid is a matter for his own soul. He may bring judgment like Michael Angelo or peace like Angelico; he may come with mourning like the great Athenian or with mirth like the singer of Sicily; nor is it for us to do aught but accept his teaching, knowing that we cannot smite the bitter lips of Leopardi into laughter or burden with our discontent Goethe's serene calm. But for warrant of its truth such message must have the flame of eloquence in the lips that speak it, splendour and glory in the vision that is its witness, being justified by one thing only - the flawless beauty and perfect form of its expression: this indeed being the social idea, being the meaning of joy in art. Not laughter where none should laugh, nor the calling of peace where there is no peace; not in paintin ~ Oscar Wilde

If intellectual curiosity, professional pride, and ambition are the dominant incentives to research, then assuredly no one has a fairer chance of gratifying them than a mathematician. ~ G.H. Hardy

You don't get to be a respected intellectual by uttering truisms in monosyllables. ~ Noam Chomsky

The whole basis of my work is analysing what I do and building some sort of intellectual framework. The only possible effect one can have on the world is through unpopular ideas. They are the only subversion. ~ Vivienne Westwood

Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but alas, since it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?), insufficient numbers of Catholics have been able to be sensible. ~ A.C. Grayling

I've never been an intellectual but I have this look. ~ Woody Allen

Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. - IRVING JOHN GOOD, "SPECULATIONS CONCERNING THE FIRST ULTRAINTELLIGENT MACHINE," 1965 ~ Ray Kurzweil

Type is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic portrait of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation's intellectual status. ~ Peter Behrens

I think the notion of worldbuilding is a failure of literary sophistication. ~ Michael Moorcock

How much more so when it comes to the deep truths of the Christian faith. God loves you; you matter to him. That is a fact, stated as a proposition. I imagine most of you have heard it any number of times. Why, then, aren't we the happiest people on earth? It hasn't reached our hearts. Facts stay lodged in the mind, for the most part. They don't speak at the level we need to hear. Proposition speaks to the mind, but when you tell a story, you speak to the heart. We've been telling each other stories since the beginning of time. It is our way of communicating the timeless truths, passing them down. And that's why when Jesus comes to town, he speaks in a way that will get past all our intellectual defenses and disarm our hearts. He tells a certain kind of story. ~ John Eldredge

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? ~ Bill Shapiro

In the most secret heart of every intellectual ... there lies hidden ... the hope of power, the desire to bring his ideas to reality by imposing them on his fellow man. ~ Lionel Trilling

We aren't born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am.
Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Along with Islam and Christianity, Judaism does insist that some turgid and contradictory and sometimes evil and mad texts, obviously written by fairly unexceptional humans, are in fact the word of god. I think that the indispensable condition of any intellectual liberty is the realisation that there is no such thing. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The simple sense of wonder at the shapes of things, and at their exuberant independence of our intellectual standards and our trivial definitions, is the basis of spirituality. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Men and women are so alike that a woman must make an intellectual effort to differentiate herself. As soon as one understands who one is, one can disguise oneself any way one wants. As soon as one has found one's look, one's shape, one does not need to alter it too much, in fact I would say that one should not change it. ~ Sonia Rykiel

Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent. ~ Charles Duhigg

There's nothing situate under heaven's eye But hath his bond in earth, in sea, in sky. The beasts, the fishes, and the winged fowls Are their males' subjects and at their controls. Man, more divine, the master of all these, Lord of the wide world and wild wat'ry seas, Indu'd with intellectual sense and souls, Of more pre-eminence than fish and fowls, Are masters to their females, and their lords; Then let your will attend on their accords. ~ William Shakespeare

Anecdote: Greatness Means Leading the Way. No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatness, It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluent; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

As intellectual as we think we are, you still trip, we still have human foibles, sexuality, all the different things to still make you aware of your humanity. ~ Robin Williams

The failure of Communism was consecrated in the fall of the Soviet Union. The remarkable thing is that, as in most cases when prophecy fails, the faith never faltered. Indeed, an alternative version had long been maturing, though cast into the shadows for a time by enthusiasm for the quick fix of revolution. It had, however, been maturing for at least a century and already had a notable repertoire of institutions available. We may call it Olympianism, because it is the project of an intellectual elite that believes that it enjoys superior enlightenment and that its business is to spread this benefit to those living on the lower slopes of human achievement. And just as Communism had been a political project passing itself off as the ultimate in scientific understanding, so Olympianism burrowed like a parasite into the most powerful institution of the emerging knowledge economy--the universities.

We may define Olympianism as a vision of human betterment to be achieved on a global scale by forging the peoples of the world into a single community based on the universal enjoyment of appropriate human rights. Olympianism is the cast of mind dedicated to this end, which is believed to correspond to the triumph of reason and community over superstition and hatred. It is a politico-moral package in which the modern distinction between morals and politics disappears into the aspiration for a shared mode of life in which the communal transcends individual life. To be a moral ~ Kenneth Minogue

The hobgoblin of a little mind may be the genius of a great one. ~ Hermester Barrington

Past and future monopolize the poet's sensory and intellectual faculties, detached from the immediate spectacle. These two philtres become utterly clear the moment one stops being hypnotized by the cloudy precipitate constituted by the world of today. ~ Andre Breton

Such was also the case with Nietzsche, a volcanic genius if ever there was one. Here, too, there is passionate exteriorization of an inward fire, but in a manner that is both deviated and demented; we have in mind here, not the Nietzschian philosophy, which taken literally is without interest, but his poetical work, whose most intense expression is in part his 'Zarathustra'. What this highly uneven book manifests above all is the violent reaction of an a priori profound soul against a mediocre and paralyzing cultural environment; Nietzsche's fault was to have only a sense of grandeur in the absence of all intellectual discernment. 'Zarathustra' is basically the cry of a grandeur trodden underfoot, whence comes the heart-rending authenticity – grandeur precisely – of certain passages; not all of them, to be sure, and above all not those which express a half-Machiavellian, half-Darwinian philosophy, or minor literary cleverness. Be that as it may, Nietzsche's misfortune, like that of other men of genius, such as Napoleon, was to be born after the Renaissance and not before it; which indicates evidently an aspect of their nature, for there is no such thing as chance. ~ Frithjof Schuon

The dream is a sort of substitution for those emotional and intellectual trains of thought ~ Sigmund Freud

Unlike art which contains a message, wine conveys nothing, it has no intellectual or cognitive content ~ Tim Crane

Yale is a crucible in American life for the accommodation of intellectual achievement, of wisdom, of refinement, with the democratic ideals of openness, of social justice and of equal opportunity. ~ Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

The polishedness and the sophistication were what I was interested in. I mean, give me a polka dot, a floral print, a pleated dress, a big fur coat, that was always my language, and it wasn't very "in" when I was starting out, so I had a difficult time in the beginning. ~ Jason Wu

An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence. ~ Irving Kristol

[W]hen you practise right meditation, you 'cease from practice based on intellectual understanding, pursuing words and following speech, and learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate your self. ~ Steve Hagen

It places value on experience versus intellectual understanding. I saw a lot of people contemplating things but it didn't seem to lead to too many places. I got very interested in people who had discovered something more significant than an intellectual, abstract understanding. ~ Steve Jobs

I think we should think of AI as the intellectual equivalent of a backhoe. It will be much better than us at a lot of things. ~ Geoffrey Hinton

There is nothing more alone in the universe than man. He is alone because he has the intellectual capacity to know that he is separated by a vast gulf of social memory and experiment from the lives of his animal associates. ~ Loren Eiseley