Doris Lessing on intelligence

All political movements are like this — we are in the right, everyone else is in the wrong. The people on our own side who disagree with us are heretics, and they start becoming enemies.

I’m always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.

What’s terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the first-rate. To pretend that you don’t need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you’re capable of better.

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

Albert Einstein1879–1955Out of My Later Years (1950), Ch. 51 “The Goal of Human Existence” (1943)

• God
• Thinking

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Marita in Ch. 11

• Happiness

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

Dwight D. Eisenhower1890–1969

• Clever Jabs