Arthur Conan Doyle Quotes

A man is never astonished that he doesn't know what another does, but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowing what he does.

Rule of thumb: if you think something is clever and sophisticated beware-it is probably self-indulgence.

Sometimes you can know too much. A lot of brainy people like Stephen Fry are quite depressive.

Anytime I write something that's trying to be too smart, it doesn't work.

We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

I feel it's the conscious mind that messes things up. The conscious mind is constantly telling you, this might happen or that might happen, even before it has happened. Your conscious mind tells you the next ball might be a out-swinger, but when it's coming at you you realize it's an in-swinger... so literally, you've played two balls.

Maybe I think too much.

I try not to intellectualise what I do.

I'm more cerebral than I want to be.

I don't analyze what I'm doing. I've read convincing interpretations of my work, and sometimes I've noticed something that I wasn't aware of, but I think, at this point, people read into my work out of habit. Or I'm just very, very smart.

An intelligence test sometimes shows a man how smart he would have been not to have taken it.

I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.

Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn't notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates.

Sometimes I think your intellect can get in your way as an actor or an artist. When you come from a world of improv and comedy, you're able to let it flicker and fall out.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

A growing body of psychology research shows that incompetence deprives people of the ability to recognize their own incompetence. To put it bluntly, dumb people are too dumb to know it…. Along the same lines, people who aren't talented in a given area tend not to be able to recognize the talents or good ideas of others, from co-workers to politicians. This may impede the democratic process, which relies on citizens having the capacity to identify and support the best candidate or policy.

I like to think of myself as fairly intellectual.

Anybody can play decent golf like me, but people trip on their own minds. They need to create a little distance between what they think and what they do.

For me, my greatest weakness is also my greatest strength: I'm a complete overthinker about everything.

I've been told I'm bright. But when I act, I get incredibly stupid. I feel my intellect slowing down. I feel it happening physically. And that's not negative in acting!

When people compliment me, I don't put much meaning into them, but when they say bad things, I take them too seriously. I try to fix this mentality, but it's hard.

You're told that you're in your head too much, a phrase that's often deployed against the quiet and cerebral. Or maybe there's another word for such people: thinkers.

You cannot question an assumption you do not know you have made.

The hardest assumption to challenge is the one you don't even know you are making.

Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions.