Pseudo-Intellectualism Quotes

There's an expression in Yiddish, which is "der gelernte naar" - a "learned fool." You can know a great deal, you can have a Ph.D., and you can still be a total idiot.

Fraser's mother, Janice, was actually quite a happy soul but she had to hide it because, like all pseudo intellectuals, she thought being cheery made her look stupid, which of course she was for believing that rubbish in the first place. She like to talk about Sartre sometimes, just as insurance.

Combien de gens se font abstraits pour para?tre profonds! La plupart des termes abstraits sont des ombres qui cachent des vides. How many people become abstract in order to appear profound! Most abstract terms are shadows that conceal a void.

Every work of art (unless it is a psuedo-intellectualist work, a work already comprised in some ideology that it merely illustrates, as with Brecht) is outside ideology, is not reducible to ideology. Ideology circumscribes without penetrating it. The absence of ideology in a work does not mean an absence of ideas; on the contrary it fertilizes them.

A learned fool is one who has read everything and simply remembered it.

Not knowing a thing is not ignorance. Feigning knowledge you don't have can be--Sholto

A whipper-snapper of criticism who quoted dead languages to hide his ignorance of life.

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

These terrible sociologists, who are the astrologers and alchemists of our twentieth century.

The internet has spawned people for whom knowingness is more important than knowledge. It equips you with the illusion of offering knowledge instantly - and quite easily - so you can read a few articles on a few subjects and feel well informed but not actually know any of those subjects in any depth.

There's something I believe wholeheartedly: Cynicism is the true refuge of the pseudo-intellectual, .. Cynicism is easy. Joy is an extremely advanced spiritual and intellectual tenet.

It's a fairly common phenomenon of London life - people having fully developed critiques of books they haven't read and films they haven't seen. I'd probably include myself in that.

Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!

One problem with the focus on speculation is that it tends to promote the growth of the great intellectual cancer of our times: conspiracy theories.

Getting up and drawing a Venn diagram is a great way to appear smart. It doesn't matter if your Venn diagram is wildly inaccurate, in fact, the more inaccurate the better.

Literature has her quacks no less than medicine, and they are divided into two classes; those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth; we shall get second-hand sense from the one, and original nonsense from the other.

The people who know nothing about music are the ones always talking about it.

In the early days you have a tendency to intellectualize, but you're really just trying to sound smart and score with the chicks.

Vague and mysterious forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance and hindrance of true knowledge.

The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.

People have proven over and over that they will read if they are given something they like. The problem with reading is not reading, its that almost everything out there sucks. For so long, publishing has been run by a cartel of snobby pseudo-intellectual failed writers, and the resulting output has reflected not what the market wants, but what they think people are supposed to read.

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.

I tend to read quite serious things in order to try and appear superior.

You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense.