Intellectual Cowardice Quotes & Sayings

Disgust is expressed by violence, and it is to be noted of our intellectual temper that violence is a quality which is felt to have a peculiarly intellectual sanction. Our preference, even as articulated by those who are most mild in their persons, is increasingly for the absolute and extreme, of which we feel violence to be the true sign. The gentlest of us will know that the tigers of wrath are to be preferred to the horses of instruction and will consider it intellectual cowardice to take into account what happens to those who ride tigers. — Lionel Trilling

The Christian message has a moral challenge. If the message is true, the moral challenge has to be accepted. So God is not a fit object for man's detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say "How interesting!" God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ ... We know that to find God and to accept Jesus Christ would be a very inconvenient experience. It would involve the rethinking of our whole outlook on life and the readjustment of our whole manner of life. And it is a combination of intellectual and moral cowardice which makes us hesitate. We do not find because we do not seek. We do not seek because we do not want to find, and we know that the way to be certain of not finding is not to seek ... Christ's promise is plain: "Seek and you will find. — John R.W. Stott

Intellectual cowardice is only one of the problems of the academic community. Fort rubbed their
noses in the swill generated by their gibberish and illiteracy. It was no secret then or now that
academic publications are designed to protect the inept and to conceal ignorance. People with
nothing to say, who even lack the ability to say nothing, can hide behind the academic method for a
lifetime. — John A. Keel

As one whose genius has been duly certified by several dozen learned biographers, I think I may say a word or two on the topic of intellectual summits; which is simply that clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. — Stanislaw Lem

I can't live without Eucerin cream, lip gloss, gum, nail polish, and sparkly things. — Kelis

Moral cowardice and intellectual corruption are the natural concomitants of unchallenged privilege. — Noam Chomsky

In other countries they speak of nobility and courtesy, in London they practise it. — Frances Xavier Cabrini

I have always thought, for my part, that bad institutions made bad magistrates; just as the cowardice and hypocrisy of certain bodies results solely from the spirit which governs them. Why, for instance, in spite of the virtues and talents for which they are so noted, are the academies generally centres of intellectual repression, stupidity, and base intrigue? That question ought to be proposed by an academy: there would be no lack of competitors. — Louis Auguste Blanqui

In New York, everyone just looks hurt. It seems more honest. Maybe I just identified with them. — Anonymous

For a moment i thought i had died and gone to heaven. Now i see that i am very much alive, and heaven has been brought to me — Shannon Dermott

intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and — George Orwell

I often meet adults in their 30s, 40s, or 50s who, as soon as they recognize me, suddenly become six years old again. — Clayton Moore

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. But the one who has love, courage and wisdom moves the world. — Ammon Hennacy

A crust of lard, habit, and cowardice envelops the soul; no matter what it craves from the depths of its prison, the lard, habit, and cowardice carry out something entirely different. — Nikos Kazantzakis

Every individual is the center of a system of emanation. — Novalis

All parties attempt to represent important things that have developed outside themselves as unimportant, and where they fail in this they assail those things all the more bitterly the more admirable they are. — Friedrich Nietzsche

In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves. — George Orwell