You put too much stock in human intelligence, it doesn't annihilate human nature.
Interpretation
Human intelligence doesn't fundamentally change human nature.
This quote by Philip Roth suggests a skepticism towards the idea that human intelligence can overcome or improve human nature. Despite advancements in knowledge and technology, the underlying instincts and flaws of humanity remain unchanged, indicating that intelligence alone cannot dictate our behavior or moral compass.
In practice
During a debate about the role of technology in society, one could use this quote to emphasize the limits of intelligence in changing human behavior.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
A fully functional multiracial society cannot be achieved without a sense of history and open, honest dialogue.
What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.
In every age its (liberty's) progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food
Dwelling is not primarily inhabiting but taking care of and creating that space within which something comes into its own and flourishes.
I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.
Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunder-storm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols.
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