Richard Hofstadter Quotes

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

I'd have liked to have been a bit more intellectual. I'd have liked to have had more brains.

A second-class mind dealing with third-class material is hardly a necessity of life.

Defects and weakness in men's understandings, as well as other faculties, come from want of a right use of their own minds; I am apt to think, the fault is generally mislaid upon nature, and there is often a complaint of want of parts, when the fault lies in want of a due improvement of them.

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.

Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect.

As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.

Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.

Language and written language are the only real way we have to see inside another person's thoughts and to know what makes another person human. Without writing, we just wouldn't have that kind of access.

[Warren] Harding is incapable of thought, because he has nothing to think with.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

If you will give the matter a moment's thought, you'll see that memory is the highest faculty of the human mind.

Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects. Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another.

Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy

Intelligence is a separate gift, for the benefit of students, so that they may think of themselves as intellectual and not very intelligent, or intelligent and not very intellectual. One hopes, of course, that they try to bring the two virtues, the two elements, into their lives at the same time.

As far as intellect, what else is there? Without intellect, no story and no world.

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.

The best way of increasing the [average] intelligence of scientists would be to reduce their number.

Wit does not take the place of knowledge.

Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.

The essence of age is intellect. Wherever that appears, we call it old.

He that borrows the aid of an equal understanding doubles his own; he that uses that of a superior elevates his own to the stature of that he contemplates.

Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn't have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.

No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.