#intellectuals

We have no Arab intellectuals of international stature because we live in a state of generalized mediocrity. We are suspended in the pit without touching the bottom. ↗

— Tahar Ben Jelloun

#because #bottom #generalized #intellectuals #international

My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence. [Sources and Acknowledgements: Chapter 19] ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#intellectuals #intelligence #education

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. ↗

— Frank McCourt

#behind #crawl #edifice #his #i

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals. ↗

— Douglas Sirk

#came #few #found #i #intellectualism

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. ↗

— Ricky Skaggs

#art #art form #couch #country #form

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

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression. ↗

— Antonio Tabucchi

#case #first #foreign #intellectuals #invasion

Those intellectuals are our natural enemies; the only kind who are worth anything are the musicians and the dancers: they don’t insult anybody with their performances, and they neither sing nor dance politics. So I like them; but don’t let me hear a word about the rest ↗

— Alfred de Vigny

#politics #nature

If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good ↗

— Ezra Pound

#courage #criticism #intellectuals #opinion #taboos

French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#french-intellectuals #lacan #sartre #life