Intellectual Exchange Quotes

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable. This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is universal. The fat is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas—but sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

Argument is to me the air I breathe. Given any proposition, I cannot help believing the other side and defending it.

America has sent us many good things, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo, but you are the first philosopher, and indeed, the first man of letters for whom we are beholden to her.

Ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition.

Honest difference of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy among free men.

I think there are a lot of people who feel very passionate about needing to have an open debate. And I think it's a real sign of leadership that the press needs to be actually standing up for that.

A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.

I am passionate about truth and passionate about clarity, and I don't regard myself as particularly militant or aggressive. I simply wish to discuss what is true and to listen to evidence and put evidence forward to other people and have a sensible, sane, moderated argument.

Disagreements are one of the fundamental positive aspects of science.

The world has many very smart people who are doing interesting and different things, and there is no better way to learn than to interact with them.

The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other;

I love argument, I love debate. I don't expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that's not their job.

In all the years with IBM Research, I have especially appreciated the freedom to pursue the activities I found interesting and greatly enjoyed the stimulus, collegial cooperation, frankness, and intellectual generosity of two scientific communities, namely in superconductivity and critical phenomena.

I hope to see the bringing together of all the best educated people of the earth into a worldwide Congress of Scientists.

National culture can act as a bridge, instead of an obstacle, to mutual spiritual and intellectual understanding.

My fundamental philosophy is that you owe it to society to transfer to them any knowledge you have that might be useful.

Academical disputation gives vigor and briskness to the mind thus exercised, and relieves the languor of private study and meditation.

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.

I should like to meet a philosopher like Nietzsche somewhere in a train or a steamer, and to spend the whole night talking to him. I consider his philosophy won't last long, however. It's more showy than convincing.

I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the value of the Orientals themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.

We live in this world in order always to learn industriously and to enlighten each other by means of discussion and to strive vigorously to promote the progress of science and the fine arts.

Books are the way the dead talk to the living.

Vienna is relatively small. And it had wonderful salons, opportunities for people to get together. There was a lot of interaction between scientists and non-scientists, between Jews and non-Jews, between artists, writers and scientists, including medical scientists.