Virginia Woolf Quotes

One thing above all gives charm to men's thoughts, and this is unrest. A mind that is not uneasy irritates and bores me.

I got too fed up with films that didn't make you think. I liked the idea of one that you'd have to be dancing around with. I like my mind to be engaged when I watch a film.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

A dozen more questions occurred to me. Not to mention twenty-two possible solutions to each one, sixteen resulting hypotheses and counter-theorems, eight abstract speculations, a quadrilateral equation, two axioms, and a limerick. That's raw intelligence for you.

You know, interesting minds usually do hold more than one idea at a time.

My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

I like ideas. I find them more exciting than human behavior for the most part.

Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

Well, the fact is that one imagination is critically important, and if you have had your imagination stimulated by what is basically a variety of subjects, you are much more amenable to accepting, to understanding and interacting with the realities of the world.

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

My brain is open.

Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind.

My father once told me that I have a mind like a lint trap - I pull stuff out of everything, and a lot of it just clings.

Thinking has become a superfluous exercise... purely internal, without compelling force, more or less a game.

My biggest turn-on has to be brains, intelligence.

There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.

New York is a theme park for people with IQs over 108.

Give me rampant intellectualism as a coping mechanism.

You play more games, you get more maturity, and you get smarter.

Any group that can be livened up by Mensa must be pretty much dead!

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

Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definitions.