Intellect Quotes

• Character is higher than intellect... A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Strength, Success

  "The American Scholar". Ralph Waldo Emerson's Oration delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, emersoncentral.com. August 31, 1837.

  98 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.

  Zhuangzi

  Heart, Knowledge, Eye

  93 Copy quote

• Intellect is merely a narrow and highly specific kind of thing that we DO, but our immediacy relates us to what we naturally and essentially ARE, the actualities of our full-dimensional existence.

  Kenny Smith

  Philosophy, Kind, Immediacy

  4 Copy quote

• You should be able to use your intellect and not to be dominated by your intellect.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

  10 Copy quote

• Understand that wisdom is higher than intellect and discretion is higher than debating.

  Nirmala Srivastava

  Love, Wisdom, Yoga

  5 Copy quote

• The unanswerable mysteries... the attitude that all is uncertain... to summarize it - the humility of the intellect.

  Richard P. Feynman

  Attitude, Humility, Pride

  6 Copy quote

• Is not the history of real civilization the slow and gradual emancipation of the intellect, of the judgment, from the mastery of passion? Is not that man civilized whose reason sits the crowned monarch of his brain - whose passions are his servants?

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Real, Passion, Men

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.1778, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why should we desire the destruction of human passions? Take passions from human beings and what is left? The great object should be not to destroy passions, but to make them obedient to the intellect. To indulge passion to the utmost is one form of intemperance - to destroy passion is another. The reasonable gratification of passion under the domination of the intellect is true wisdom and perfect virtue.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Passion, Perfect, Desire

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1993). “Reason, Tolerance, and Christianity: The Ingersoll Debates”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Here in India, it is religion that forms the very core of the national heart. It is the backbone, the bed-rock, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built. Politics, power, and even intellect form a secondary consideration here. Religion, therefore, is the one consideration in India.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Heart, Rocks, Bed

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1125, Manonmani Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If there is inequality in nature, still there must be equal chance for all - or if greater for some and for some less - the weaker should be given more chance than the strong. In other words, a Brahmin is not so much in need of education as a Chandala. If the son of a Brahmin needs one teacher, that of a Chandala needs ten. For greater help must be given to him whom nature has not endowed with an acute intellect from birth. It is a madman who carries coals to Newcastle. The poor, the downtrodden, the ignorant, let these be your God.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Teacher, Strong, Son

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2840, Manonmani Publishers

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Character, Feet, Mind

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Vivekananda Reader”, p.297, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  1590 Copy quote

• The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing.

  Sigmund Freud

  Voice, Squash, Doe

  "The Future of an Illusion". Book by Sigmund Freud, 1927.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Knowledge, Secret, Rift

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.50, BookBaby

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  War, Men, Pessimism

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.44, Simon and Schuster

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Albert Einstein (2015). “Bite-Size Einstein: Quotations on Just About Everything from the Greatest Mind of the Twentieth Century”, p.31, St. Martin's Press

  125 Copy quote

  Show source

• Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. Every advance into knowledge opens new prospects, and produces new incitements to farther progress.

  Samuel Johnson

  Happiness, Curiosity, Progress

  Samuel Johnson, William Page (1860). “Life and Writings”, p.37

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Skepticism rather than credulity is the highest principle that the human intellect can use to ennoble our existence.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religion, Use, Principles

  22 Copy quote

• Intellect--brain force.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Brain, Force

  4 Copy quote

• Just as iron rusts from disuse... even so does inaction spoil the intellect.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Inspirational, Iron, Acting

  "The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci" translated by Jean Paul Richter, 1888.

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a man's eye is on the Eternal, his intellect will grow.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Intelligent, Men

  40 Copy quote

• The higher the voice the smaller the intellect.

  Ernest Newman

  Voice, Intelligence, Higher

  28 Copy quote

• Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Shining, Religion, Battle

  Mohandas Karmchand Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, V. Geetha (2004). “Soul Force: Gandhi's Writings on Peace”, p.224, Tara Publishing

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

  Alan Watts

  Philosophy, Men, Expression

  Alan Watts (1995). “The Philosophies of Asia: The Edited Transcripts”, Tuttle Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mind must become the servant of the intellect, not the slave of the senses. It must discriminate and detach itself from the body. Like the ripe tamarind fruit, which, becomes loose inside the shell, it must be unattached to this shell, this casement called body.

  Sathya Sai Baba

  Mind, Shells, Body

  12 Copy quote