#intellectuals

Trotsky was so much an intellectual that in the final analysis, Marxism was not quite enough for him. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#leon-trotsky #marxism #trotskyism #love

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts. ↗

— Albert Camus

#intelligence #philosophy #scholars #intelligence

Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way. ↗

— Marcel Proust

#incapable #intellectuals #like #many #saying

The role of genius is not to complicate the simple, but to simplify the complicated. ↗

— Criss Jami

#complication #genius #intelligence #practicality #practicality-for-intellectuals

Respectable opinion would never consider an assessment of the Reagan Doctrine or earlier exercises in terms of their actual human costs, and could not comprehend that such an assessment—which would yield a monstrous toll if accurately conducted on a global scale—might perhaps be a proper task in the United States. At the same level of integrity, disciplined Soviet intellectuals are horrified over real or alleged American crimes, but perceive their own only as benevolent intent gone awry, or errors of an earlier day, now overcome; the comparison is inexact and unfair, since Soviet intellectuals can plead fear as an excuse for their services to state violence. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#consensus #fear #hypocrisy #intellectuals #international-law

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. ↗

— Daniel Barenboim

#conflict #continent #contributed #deal #east

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. ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

#advice #being #forget #friend #give

In the Arab world, there is no link between the cultural habits of peoples and the ways of thinking and creating of modern intellectuals. They are two separate worlds. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#arab world #between #creating #cultural #habits

What is an intellectual? In general, someone seriously devoted to what used to be called the “life of the mind”: thinking pursued not instrumentally, for the sake of practical goals, but simply for the sake of knowing and understanding. ↗

— Gary Gutting

#life

Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals. ↗

— Abdolkarim Soroush

#difficult #equilibrium #establishing #identity #intellectuals