Intellectual Awakening Quotes

Evil is relatively rare. Ignorance is epidemic.

Truth travels down from the heights of philosophy to the humblest walks of life, and up from the simplest perceptions of an awakened intellect to the discoveries which almost change the face of the world. At every stage of its progress it is genial, luminous, creative.

Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?

The Islamic world is fed up with violence and extremism in the name of religion and is ready for an era of progressive, democratic Muslim governments …. After about two centuries of dispute between tradition and modernity in the world of Islam there must be a high level of mental preparation for the acceptance of a major transformation in the mind and lives of Muslims.

What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.

There are a lot of recurring themes that I resonated with when I read 'A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.'

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

I did not discover literature of any kind until I was about eleven, or ten.

An idea is a light turned on in a man's soul. Comic-strip artists are in the habit of representing it by means of a light bulb flashing on, above the head of a character who has suddenly grasped an idea. In simple, primitive terms, this is an appropriate symbol.

'A Passage To India' by E. M. Forster - It opened my mind to a world I'd never known before.

There comes a moment in history when ignorance is no longer a forgivable offense... a moment when only wisdom has the power to absolve. - Bertrand Zobrist

I was reading Plato's 'The Republic' at age 18, and I can't account fully the electricity that had for me.

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

My darkness has been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold, the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.

At some point, I picked up an old library copy of 'To The Lighthouse' someone had bought for 25 cents. I began to read and didn't stop until the sun had blistered my back. A mysterious rightness, a beautiful submerged truth had invaded me, one that has ever since seemed slightly beyond my grasp.

The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.

The early 1960s, when I started my graduate studies at UC Berkeley, were a period of experimental supremacy and theoretical impotence.

All of a sudden we were going on school trips, seeing these amazing plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett. My whole world went from 'This is really fun' to 'This is fascinating to me'.

My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about.

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began.

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

I began to be a woman at twelve, or more properly, a genius.

As one who loves literature, art, music and history, I've been deeply rooted in the Harlem Renaissance for many years.

Training and education is one and the same: that is, to train the mind through a discipline in order to awake the inner intelligence of the individuals.

Just as you must come through a woman's womb to attain physical birth, so must you come through Wisdom to achieve mental birth. And like childbirth, Wisdom often comes with pain.