“The intellectual is always showing off, the lover is always getting lost. The intellectual runs away, afraid of drowning; the whole business of love is to drown in the sea.”

—Rumi
  • Interviewer: What differentiates the intellectuals you like from those you don't?
  • Ingmar Bergman: A good intellectual, in my opinion, is one who has trouble with his emotions. He must doubt his intellect, have fantasies, and be powerfully emotional.

“Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit—to the “conquest” of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature.”

—Alan Watts

If you want my respect, all you have to do is be true to yourself and actually use intellect

“As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw.”

—Shunryu Suzuki

“To me, being an intellectual doesn’t mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”

—Chinua Achebe

Intellect loudly and boldly proclaims
I’ll believe it when I see it

Wisdom softly smiles and understands
I will see it when I believe it

Becoming a Scientist: What Does It Take?

hhmi.org

Sean Carroll thinks the ingredients to being a good scientist are part intellectual and part emotional. On the emotional side, one has to be patient because much of what scientists do doesn’t work. “You need more the mentality of a marathoner than a sprinter here, you have to have the endurance.” Intellectually, a scientist needs a constant curiosity, not looking for the easy answers but being prepared for the unexpected—flexibility combined with a long steady effort. A leader in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or evo-devo, Carroll exemplifies the traits that will help one make it to the finish line.

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