Joseph Joubert Quotes

I never understood a word John Cassavetes said. And I think he did that deliberately.

I studied English at Princeton in the early eighties in what I consider a period of high obscurity. Professors and students ran around discussing the work of critics and philosophers that I doubt they'd read or understood.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.

You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense.

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

Affect not little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument.

The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.

I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising man or editor or writer, for self-respect.

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.

When cleverness emerges There is great hypocrisy.

All the raves were just words. You don't want to let words confuse you. Words come cheap.

Not knowing a thing is not ignorance. Feigning knowledge you don't have can be--Sholto

Unconsciously I had discovered the commentator's secret weapon-that so long as you can wield words, it isn't necessary to know what you're talking about.

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar - that I call an achievement.

He (Intellectuals) claims that label to compensate for his own inadequacies. It's as old as that saying: tell me what you boast of and I'll tell you what you lack. Our daily bread. The incompetent always present themselves as experts, the cruel as pious, sinners as excessively devout, usurers as benefactors, the small-minded as patriots, the arrogant as humble, the vulgar as elegant and the feeble-minded as intellectual.

Study's overrated. Just find someone smart to copy off. -Adrian to Lissa

Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.

The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so.

I am surrounded by flatterers and fools. It can drive a man to madness,.. . Half of them don’t dare tell me the truth, and the other half can’t find it.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

A charlatan makes obscure what is clear; a thinker makes clear what is obscure.

This is a large part of the academic profession: to make up complex, subtle arguments that are childishly ridiculous but are enveloped in sufficient profundity that they take on a kind of plausibility.