Intellectuals Quotes

I had a line in one of my movies - `Everyone knows the same truth.` Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it. One person will distort it with a kind of wishful thinking like religion, someone else will distort it by thinking political solutions are going to do something, someone else will think a life of sensuality is going to do it, someone else will think art transcends. Art for me has always been the Catholicism of the intellectuals. There is no afterlife for the Catholics really, and there`s no afterlife for the arts. `Your painting lived on after you` - well, that doesn`t really do it. That`s not what you want. Even if your painting does have some longevity, eventually that`s going to go. There won`t be any works of William Shakespeare or Ludwig van Beethoven, or any theatre to see them in, or air or light. I`ve always felt you`ve got to live your life within the context of this worst-case scenario. Which is true; the worst-case scenario is here.

(when asked if he wished he had a different profession) Oh, all writers wish that. That`s why we become writers. We want to do something active but we can`t. Paul Johnson, in his "History of the 20th Century", says all the great crimes are committed by intellectuals. He says intellectuals love power and we get tired of sitting on our asses.

I`m not one of those James Joyce intellectuals who can stand back and look at the whole edifice... It was a slow process for me to just crawl out of it, like a snake leaving his skin behind.

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

Country and western is ignored by the intellectuals. They don`t look at it as an art form. They think it`s just somebody sitting on his couch singing about his life.

We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense.

In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom... Make no mistake, all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.

If you explore beneath shyness or party chit-chat, you can sometimes turn a dull exchange into an intriguing one. I`ve found this to be particularly true in the case of professors or intellectuals, who are full of fascinating information, but need encouragement before they`ll divulge it.

I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can`t read any poetry.

It was generally believed that Catholics were not interested in arts and science graduate schools. They weren`t going to be intellectuals. And so I put the theses to the test. And they all collapsed.

Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it`s stranger than non-fiction as well.

Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.

Intellectuals are people who believe that ideas are of more importance than values. That is to say, their own ideas and other people`s values.

After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people, these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country.

The intellectuals` chief cause of anguish are one another`s works.

We`ve no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don`t forget it.

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me.

Most intellectuals today have a phobia of any explanation of the mind that invokes genetics.

I think this confusion leads intellectuals and artists themselves to believe that the elite arts and humanities are a kind of higher, exalted form of human endeavor.

people are really smart and engaged. There`s no better place in the country to write serious nonfiction. There`s no better place to be public intellectuals.

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals