Joseph Brodsky Quotes

Geniuses always think it's easier than we make it out to be.

Everything is more complicated than it looks to most people.

There are people who say, 'Oh this guy is quite thick.' I think the reason is that, increasingly, I don't mind being simple in terms of literary expression. Others say, 'No, no, no. He went to Cambridge. He got a good degree. He must be Einstein.'

I knew that the most important thing a man has is in his head, and from a young age, I often studied the head structure of each person, hoping to crack his codes. I considered a high forehead a gift from God.

If your work is so smart that only smart people get it, it's not that smart.

Intellect is the ability to avoid belaboring the obvious.

What we opprobriously call stupidity, though not an enlivening quality in common society, is nature's favorite resource for preserving steadiness of conduct and consistency of opinion.

...everything looks worse in black and white.

With stupidity and sound digestion, man may front much.

Intelligence is: (a) the most complex phenomenon in the Universe; or (b) a profoundly simple process. The answer, of course, is (c) both of the above. It's another one of those great dualities that make life interesting.

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

Intelligence is not discernment and judgment or critical evaluation.

Reality is far more complex and messy than many of the grander themes and explanations would have us believe.

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle with the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expected or hoped to see than on what was really there.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

I don't think that politics are as complex as people like to make them seem or out to be.

Intelligence is a critical thing.

Do try to remember this: even the world's not so black as it is painted" -Valerie to Stephen (pg. 408)

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secrets of things.

Everything is simpler than you think and at the same time more complex than you imagine

Intelligence is called the world's second oldest profession for a reason. Everyone does it.

Some people think that I haven't got the brains to be that clever.

A foreign correspondent, after talking to me for a while, once said: "You don't seem smart enough to be so good at what you're doing. Do you have an explanation?"

We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.