Intellectual Discussion Quotes

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

It's always enjoyable talking with someone who has a very well-functioning, reasoning mind.

At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem

Conversation with a friend will only bear good fruit of knowledge when both think only of the matter under consideration and forget that they are friends.

One great pleasure of being an academic is the ability to trade in ideas with your colleagues and students; it is not much fun being the only connoisseur of some fine point.

John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'

You know, what Einstein has just said isn't so stupid.

You know, I've taught philosophy for years and one argues in the hypothetical all the time.

There is extensive critical scholarship that provides illustrations in many areas of scholarship. I've discussed many cases myself, while also citing and often relying on academic studies that disentangle these webs of mystification woven for the general public. It's impossible to provide illustrations that would even approach accuracy, let alone carry any conviction, without going well beyond the bounds of this discussion.

If I'm saying something with an intelligent background, then at least it is creating conversation. Whether that conversation is people agreeing or disagreeing, I'm happy.

If one talks to more than four people, it is an audience; and one cannot really think or exchange thoughts with an audience.

I'd like to do policy and I'd like to do philosophy, I'd like to be able to get into the depth, into the meat of the argument - that's the kind of stuff I want to do.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Nothing will ruin an interesting intelligent argument more quickly than the arrival of a pretty girl.

What I like best is sitting in a room together with really smart engineers thinking about a problem.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can't stand it.

The drama may be called that part of theatrical art which lends itself most readily to intellectual discussion: what is left is theater.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

I like being surrounded by students and intellectuals.

It's arguing, in a very good and positive way. It's sort of sitting down and pulling an argument apart. I think that's a very oddly Jewish thing. And it's the chaos of family and a slight sort of cosy messiness of it all.

There are two principles on which all men of intellectual integrity and good will can agree, as a 'basic minimum,' as a precondition of any discussion, co-operation or movement toward an intellectual Renaissance. . . . They are not axioms, but until a man has proved them to himself and has accepted them, he is not fit for an intellectual discussion. These two principles are: a. that emotions are not tools of cognition; b. that no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others.

We talk about war in America, we talk about it on an intellectual level. We don’t talk about the sound or smells of war…the pain

I enjoy intellectual companionship.