Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

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.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

My brain is open.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Research has been called good business, a necessity, a gamble, a game. It is none of these - it's a state of mind.

I'm a huge believer in learning anything from multiple points of view.

To think, analyze and invent, he [Pierre Menard] also wrote me, “are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence. To glorify the occasional fulfillment of this function, to treasure ancient thoughts of others, to remember with incredulous amazement that the doctor universal is thought, is to confess our languor or barbarism. Every man should be capable of all ideas, and I believe that in the future he will be." (Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote, 1939)

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers. But we're not dumb enough to accept that there aren't better answers.

You can only be funny if you have matters of great importance on your mind.

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

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

I have a good mind but I don't like to bore anyone with it.

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.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.

Large skepticism leads to large understanding. Small skepticism leads to small understanding. No skepticism leads to no understanding.

To have a very strong opinion all the time is corrosive to a person's intellect. It becomes your default position.

I've never professed to be an intellectual. I don't try to be.

I talk about very serious human affairs but with a lightness of heart.

Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.

Be quick to learn and wise to know.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.