Andre Maurois Quotes

What makes me happy is just keeping my brain challenged and stimulated and on its toes.

I think I was just constantly seeking mental stimulation from anything I could get.

No amount of energy will take the place of thought. A strenuous life with its eyes shut is a kind of wild insanity.

For me, being an innovator doesn't mean being more intelligent, more rich, it's not a word, it's an action.

Intelligent thinking means an increment of freedom in action-an emancipation from chance and fatality. 'Thought' represents the suggestion of a way of response that is different from that which would have been followed if intelligent observation had not effected an inference as to the future.

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools.

Research now seems to indicate that one hour of inner action is worth seven hours of out-in-the-worl d action. Think about that. You're working too hard.

Those who cannot think, have, in my opinion, a necessity (which goes very far towards creating a right) for amusement.

Just as dogs love to chew bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems. That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher.

I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.

I stop paying attention because as much as I love beauty, I hate stupidity, and seeing the two combined pisses me off.

Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.

i dunno," i said, "but i have an idea that people who don't think too much tend to look younger longer

Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.

Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you.

I always want to be able to be in a room where I know I'm going to be entertained and challenged.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

I like the life of ideas and applying ideas to action.

The term "intellectual" is used conventionally to refer to people who happen to have unusual opportunities in this regard, and as always, opportunity confers moral responsibility.

When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.

When I get the point, I often don't know what to do with it.