Intellectual Identity Quotes

Am I going to complain about being typecast as smart? I don't think so.

I've been called many things, but never an intellectual.

I want to emphasize the idea of black as intellectuality and conventionality.

I'm not an intellectual, I'm just a writer.

Complaints about the social irresponsibility of the intellectual typically concern the intellectual's tendency to marginalize herself, to move out from one community by interior identification of herself with some other community - for example, another country or historical period... It is not clear that those who thus marginalize themselves can be criticized for social irresponsibility. One cannot be irresponsible toward a community of which one does not think of oneself as a member. Otherwise runaway slaves and tunnelers under the Berlin Wall would be irresponsible.

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

A status symbol is a book. A very easy book to read is The Catcher in the Rye. Walk around with that under your arm, kids. That is status.

I wouldn't say I was a born writer; I'm a born thinker.

To be intellectual does not require one to be alienated and oppositional.

When I was about twelve I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. If there is such a thing as a genius, I am one, and if there isn't I don't care.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

I'm not what you call your basic intellectual.

When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for 'The Simpsons' who'd briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.

I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said, 'You are what you eat,' but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote.

I know some real intellectual people who might laugh, very close friends who might laugh when I'm said to be an intellectual.

I have no nationality - the best possible status for an intellectual.

I don't consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.

A raznochinets needs no memory—it is enough for him to tell of the books he has read, and his biography is done.

I would like to say a few things about that photo in 'Tatler'. I have no regrets. The article was about the 20 cleverest people in England, covered up only by the thing that makes them clever. A saxophonist, for example, had only his saxophone, and an artist, his easel. So I was covered by books.

A man is known by the books he reads.

Nerds... the 'nerd' has never been precisely defined, thanks to the psychological complexity of the creature. The word has connotations of some level of intelligence. The typical nerd is a male with intelligence but no sense of giving it a manly face.

I like to think of myself as fairly intellectual.