Edward Dahlberg Quotes

One sometimes gets the impression that those intimidating words are there to keep us from understanding. That way, the scholars can appear Superior, and will not likely be suspected of Not Knowing Something.

If ever you wish to meet intellectual frauds in quantity, go to Paris.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

A theme is always necessary, a plain, simple, unadorned theme to confuse the ignorant.

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.

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

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.

I completely scorn the falsifying, the sanctimonious, the cheap and the shoddy.

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

There are a lot of people who write very intensely about things they do not and cannot do.

Real philosophy is like trying to read an alarm system installation manual in Korean.

The notion of our leaders as patrician ascetics of unassailable virtue is risible.

I must say I hate our diplomats. I think with few exceptions they are arrogant humbugs and I expect they know it.

… politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia

So may the outward shows be least themselves: The world is still deceived with ornament. In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being seasoned with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes Some mark of virtue on his outward parts.

Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether.

Jargon is part ceremonial robe, part false beard.

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

The intellectual world is deeply conformist... We talk a lot about the crimes of others. When it comes to our own crimes, we are nationalists in the Orwellian sense.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

Those who pretend to know what they don't, will be thought ignorant of even what they know.

Everybody is full of crap. The coin of the realm is being full of crap. The best people - being full of crap are our leaders and our superstars.

When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.