Rationalism Intellect Quotes

Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware. They might be trying to disguise and excuse real suffering by wrapping it up in big incomprehensible words. Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption. If you hear any of these, sound the alarm. And if you happen to live in a country whose leader routinely says things like 'Their sacrifice will redeem the purity of our eternal nation' – know that you are in deep trouble. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Mind you, I cannot swear that my story is true. It may have been a dream; or worse, a symptom of some severe mental disorder. But I believe it is true. After all, how are we to know what things there are on earth? Strange monstrosities still exist, and foul, incredible perversions. Every war, each new geographical or scientific discovery, brings to light some new bit of ghastly evidence that the world is not altogether the same place we fondly imagine it to be. Sometimes peculiar incidents occur which hint of utter madness.

How can we be sure that our smug conceptions of reality actually exist? To one man in a million dreadful knowledge is revealed, and the rest of us remain mercifully ignorant. There have been travelers who never came back, and research workers who disappeared. Some of those who did return were deemed mad because of what they told, and others sensibly concealed the wisdom that had so horribly been revealed. Blind as we are, we know a little of what lurks beneath our normal life. There have been tales of sea serpents and creatures of the deep; legends of dwarfs and giants; records of queer medical horrors and unnatural births. Stunted nightmares of men's personalities have blossomed into being under the awful stimulus of war, or pestilence, or famine. There have been cannibals, necrophiles, and ghouls; loathsome rites of worship and sacrifice; maniacal murders, and blasphemous crimes. When I think, then, of what I saw and heard, and compare it with ~ Robert Bloch

It is not excess of thought but defect of fertile and generous emotion that marks them out. Their heads are no bigger than the ordinary: it is the atrophy of te chest beneath that makes them seem so. ~ C.S. Lewis

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering. ~ William James

History remembers Abe's towering intellect but forgets that, in those days, he was more towering than intellectual. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

It is often the case with finer natures, that when the fire of the spirit dies out with increasing age, the power of the intellect is unaltered or increased. ~ Margaret Gatty

Halakha, as the human way of life in accordance with the Torah, does not aim at absolute truth, nor does it run after the fata- morgana of universal truth. Neither of them is accessible to human beings. Its aim is "earthly truth" that the human intellect is able to grasp and for whose pursuance in life man must accept personal responsibility. ~ Eliezer Berkovits

Then, as though he had suddenly become exhausted-or, rather, depleted by the demands made on him by a world greedy for the fruit of his intellect-he began to massage the side of his face with the flat of his hand, removing, with unconscious crassness, a bit of sleep from one eye. ~ J.D. Salinger

I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis. ~ Tom Robbins

Rationalism doesn't require "belief," only observation. The real, measurable world doesn't care what you believe. ~ Joe Haldeman

Keep testing your conviction from time to time, with your intellect as well as emotions to ensure you are on the right path! ~ Anuranjita Kumar

Curiously enough, it is a fear of how grace will change and improve them that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and let them stay that way. They want Him to take away their love of riches, but not their riches - to purge them of the disgust of sin, but not of the pleasure of sin. Some of them equate goodness with indifference to evil and think that God is good if He is broad-minded or tolerant about evil. Like the onlookers at the Cross, they want God on their terms, not His, and they shout, "Come down, and we will believe." But the things they ask are the marks of a false religion: it promises salvation without a cross, abandonment without sacrifice, Christ without his nails. God is a consuming fire; our desire for God must include a willingness to have the chaff burned from our intellect and the weeds of our sinful will purged. The very fear souls have of surrendering themselves to the Lord with a cross is an evidence of their instinctive belief in His Holiness. Because God is fire, we cannot escape Him, whether we draw near for conversion or flee from aversion: in either case, He affects us. If we accept His love, its fires will illumine and warm us; if we reject Him, they will still burn on in us in frustration and remorse. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

We do not claim that punning is legitimate wit. Wit consists in combination of ideas, punning in combination of words only. We wonder at the one, but we laugh at the drollery of the other - as the world goes a pun is regarded as an imponderable commodity, all know the rank it holds in the order of pure intellect. ~ Harriet Hosmer

30:21 (Asad) And among His wonders is this: He creates for you mates out of your own kind so that you might incline towards them, and He engenders love and tenderness between you: in this, behold, there are messages indeed for people who think. ~ Anonymous

The intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect. ~ William James

[Propaganda] must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect ... The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. ~ Adolf Hitler

Since the human mind is the primary weapon of the human being, it is also therefore the primary and most significant instrument of violence. ~ Bryant McGill

Poetry, whatever the manifest content of the poem, is always a violation of the rationalism and morality of bourgeois society. ~ Octavio Paz

There are many different kinds of knowledge.
The way of the heart and spirit can guide us in a
more trustworthy way than the intellect alone. ~ Buck Ghosthorse, Lakota Sioux

Happiness and sadness are just two eternal truths like day and night. A man of superior intellect is never affected by these emotions. They are not base emotions at all but a reflection of our thoughts, a reaction to our perspective on things we see, hear and do. Equanimity is not only desirable in a warrior, but a must. Without it, you are as good as dead in the battlefield. ~ Anand Neelakantan

The relation between practical and spiritual spheres in music is obvious, if only because it demands ears, finger, consciousness and intellect. ~ Luciano Berio

He's not a total idiot. In fact, he has a good head on his shoulders. He thinks like a woman, most of the time. ~ Robert Jordan

Love is the sea where intellect drowns. ~ Rumi

The cold rationalism simply covers for raw, wounded emotion. The more driven people are by the mind, the more they feel and further encode their feelings. The thickness of the tarpaulin cover is as the size of the emotion. ~ Dalit Orbach

Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a 'genius'. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

The war on Christmas is waged of weakness and fed by vision blinded. It is a war of intellect blunted to stupidity and calling begging at the feet of cowardice. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Understanding is the one-dimensional comprehension of the intellect. It leads to knowledge. Realization is three-dimensional - a simultaneous comprehension of head, heart, and instinct. It comes only from direct experience. ~ Dan Millman

God's sovereignty is not in His right hand; God's sovereignty is not in His intellect; God's sovereignty is in His love. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Paraphrasing..Science is the language of the intellect of society. Art is language of the entire human personality. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

A new Hedonism that was to recreate life and to save it from that harsh uncomely puritanism that is having, in our own day, its curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly, yet it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. ~ Oscar Wilde

Precisely. Stark was the real deal. Yes, the chance that he could physically harm someone was non-existent, but his intellect meant he could get inside your head. To me, his mind was his most dangerous weapon." "You make him sound like Hannibal Lecter," Joe said with a smile. "Hannibal Lecter is fictional. Obadiah Stark was very real and very dangerous. A sociopath such as him had no desire to be understood or psychologically dissected so that his motivations could be rationalised. He lived to kill, pure and simple. His level of intelligence made him impenetrable to any standard test one would use to perform a psychological autopsy, but it had no bearing on his actions. You could argue someone with such a high IQ would know that killing is wrong, but ~ David McCaffrey

A high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

IF, O most illustrious Knight, I had driven a plough, pastured a herd, tended a garden, tailored a garment: none would regard me, few observe me, seldom a one reprove me; and I could easily satisfy all men. But since I would survey the field of Nature, care for the nourishment of the soul, foster the cultivation of talent, become expert as Daedalus concerning the ways of the intellect; lo, one doth threaten upon beholding me, another doth assail me at sight, another doth bite upon reaching me, yet another who hath caught me would devour me; not one, nor few, they are many, indeed almost all. If you would know why, it is because I hate the mob, I loathe the vulgar herd and in the multitude I find no joy. It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. Through her virtue I envy not those who are bond though free, who grieve in the midst of pleasures, who endure poverty in their wealth, and a living death. They carry their chains within them; their spirit containeth her own hell that bringeth them low; within their soul is the disease that wasteth, and within their mind the lethargy that bringeth death. They are without the generosity that would enfranchise, the long suffering that exalteth, the splendour that doth illumine, knowledge that bestoweth life. Therefore I do not in weariness shun the arduous path, nor idly refrain my arm from the present task, nor retreat in despair from the enemy that ~ Giordano Bruno

The powerful intellect leashed by an impoverished vocabulary is a myth. Without a vocabulary, a language, the intellect cannot develop. ~ T. Geronimo Johnson

Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It's a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along. As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves. ~ Joseph Campbell

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty becasue they have no intellect. ~ George Orwell

Human intellect plays no role in redemption. ~ John F. MacArthur Jr.

Most philosophers do not want intellectual matters to reduce to a question of morality (obedience or rebellion to God's Word). They want to hold the intellect or reason to be above matters of moral volition. They hold that truth is obtainable and testable no matter what ethical condition the thinker is in.
Hence, they maintain that all disputes must be rationally resolvable, and a rational case for a philosophic position relies on a valid chain of discursive argumentation that takes us back to incontestable first principles or facts. ~ Greg L. Bahnsen

No intellect is orphaned, despite all the foundling hearts. All sons are born stranded because all fathers are sons. Every child is told, even those suckled on the teats of wolves. ~ R. Scott Bakker

The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other. ~ John William Draper

The light of common sense is fundamentally the same light as that of science, that is to say, the natural light of the intellect. But in common sense this light does not return upon itself by critical reflection, and is not perfected by what we shall learn to know as a scientific habit. ~ Jacques Maritain

Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect. If things are to alter during the next fifty years then we must re-embrace Byron's ideal: the cultured thug. ~ Jonathan Bowden

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance. ~ Isaac Bashevis Singer

And the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still. ~ Hermann Hesse

But nothing is yet clear on the subject of the intellect and the contemplative faculty. However, it seems to be another kind of soul, and this alone admits of being separated, as that which is eternal from that which is perishable, while it is clear from these remarks that the other parts of the soul are not separable, as some assert them to be, though it is obvious that they are conceptually distinct. ~ Aristotle.

At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of the intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun
as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun."
-from "The Life of a Stupid Man ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa