Intellectual Exercise Quotes

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.

Once upon a time, science, philosophy, and theology were disciplines largely undifferentiated from one another, and proving the existence of God was a fairly commonplace intellectual exercise. But as the scientific method became increasingly refined, particularly through the nineteenth century, science and religion grew apart.

My game is more a game of thinking than anything else.

I enjoy putting my mind into different situations rather than my body.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

The work I'm doing on 'Watchmen' is mind bending and physically just hard.

Without claiming superiority of intellectual over visual understanding, one is nevertheless bound to admit that the cinema allowsa number of æsthetic-intellectual means of perception to remain unexercised which cannot but lead to a weakening of judgment.

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

We are in a maze which we built, and then we fell into, now can't get out. To make the game into something real, something more than merely an intellectual exercise, we elected to lose our exceptional faculties, to reduce us an entire level. This unfortunately, includes a loss of memory.

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.

Science as an intellectual exercise enriches our culture, and is in itself ennobling. ... Though to the layman, the world revealed by the chemist may seem more commonplace, it is not so to him. Each new insight into how the atoms in their interactions express themselves in structure and transformations, not only of inanimate matter, but particularly also of living matter, provides a thrill.

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

The best and the worst thing about fashion is that anyone can do it. But because fashion can be the most unintellectual thing, you have to turn it into an intellectual exercise just for your own sanity. You have to start with a conceit.

To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.

Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination, where as you can watch a film-and even enjoy it-in a state of mindless passivity.

It's so hard to do the right thing with a pen and a piece of paper and a set of abstract thoughts.

It is not my job to compare my movies. I don't like to compare my films with other movies because I don't really have that perspective. It is an intellectual exercise, but it doesn't intuitively come to me.

My favorite puzzle is trying to work out the parts myself, after all it is a solo effort.

Writing is mentally stimulating; it's like a puzzle that makes you think all the time.

Chess is a thinking person's game. But you don't have to be smart to know what's funny! Lots of check, mate!

The mind is a muscle.

There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter if not a paragraph or a name in the history of philosophy.