Quotes on Intellect

Science would not be what it is if there had not been a Galileo, a Newton or a Lavoisier, any more than music would be what it is if Bach, Beethoven and Wagner had never lived. The world as we know it is the product of its geniuses-and there may be evil as well as beneficent genius-and to deny that fact, is to stultify all history, whether it be that of the intellectual or the economic world.

The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;_x000D_ _x000D_ Our meddling intellect_x000D_ _x000D_ Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things_x000D_ _x000D_ We murder to dissect._x000D_ _x000D_ Enough of Science and of Art;_x000D_ _x000D_ Close up these barren leaves;_x000D_ _x000D_ Come forth, and bring with you a heart_x000D_ _x000D_ That watches and receives.

The Intellect engages us in the pursuit of Truth. The Passions impel us to Action.

Science itself is badly in need of integration and unification. The tendency is more and more the other way ... Only the graduate student, poor beast of burden that he is, can be expected to know a little of each. As the number of physicists increases, each specialty becomes more self-sustaining and self-contained. Such Balkanization carries physics, and indeed, every science further away, from natural philosophy, which, intellectually, is the meaning and goal of science.

I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

But just as astronomy succeeded astrology, following Kepler's discovery of planetary regularities, the discoveries of these many principles in empirical explorations of intellectual processes in machines should lead to a science, eventually.

In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed.

This therefore is Mathematics: She reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; She gives life to her own discoveries; She awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; She brings light to our intrinsic ideas; She abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth.

I believe that in every person is a kind of circuit which resonates to intellectual discovery-and the idea is to make that resonance work

A man is not a wall, whose stones are crushed upon the road; or a pipe, whose fragments are thrown away at a street corner. The fragments of an intellect are always good.

With the intellect I always have always shall overcome, but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life Oh my God! shall the life never be sweet!

When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy.

If it were given to a man to see virtue's reward in the next world, he would occupy his intellect, memory and will in nothing but good works, careless of danger or fatigue.

When a man has once brought himself to accept uncritically all the absurdities that religious doctrines put before him and even to overlook the contradictions between them, we need not be greatly suprised at the weakness of his intellect.

We need only travel enough to give our intellects an airing.

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

There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.

The word Atman (Soul) means the "breath of life". Atman is the principle of man's life, the Soul that pervades his being, his breath, his intellect and transcends them. Atman is what remains when everything that is not the self is eliminated. It is the unborn and immortal element in man, which is not to be confused with body, mind or intellect.