Intellectual Courage Quotes

#1. Darwin was not afraid to look deeply into the void. His bold view can be seen as either noble and pessimistic or noble and admirable. For people of science, he is a hero. Denying man a privileged place in creation, .. he reaffirms with his own intellectual courage the dignity of man.

Primo Levi

#2. Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

Walter Lord

#3. I'm amazed at the courage of the journalists on the frontlines in Iraq, but we need intellectual courage in our community.

Hamza Yusuf

#4. The one man other than my father who made the most lasting impression was an uncle, Serge B. Benson. He taught me in three different classes - but above all, he taught me lessons in moral, physical, and intellectual courage that I have tried to apply in later life.

Ezra Taft Benson

#5. [Intellectual courage is] the quality that allows one to believe in one's judgement in the face of disappointment and widespread skepticism. Intellectual courage is even rarer than physical courage.

John Charles Polanyi

#6. It is my conviction that physical courage at crucial moments comes from the sum of intellectual courage and integrity that you muster at that moment.

Michael Weisskopf

#7. Stronach's fragile beauty belies an emotional strength, pragmatic resiliency, and intellectual courage. Her ideas and choreography are both enigmatic and playful.

Tami Stronach

#8. Most men use their knowledge only under guidance from others because they lack the courage to think independently using their own reasoning abilities. It takes intellectual daring to discover the truth.

Immanuel Kant

#9. But my point is that 'the death of God' is not something like the Battle of Waterloo or Magna Charta. It's not a historic event of that kind. For many people it hasn't happened yet. Others - to recur to an earlier question - are still in the phase of intense shock.

George Pattison

#10. The longer the life the more the offense, the more the offense the more the pain, the more the pain the less the defense and the less the defense the less the gain.

Thomas Wyatt

#11. Deal honestly and objectively with yourself; intellectual honesty and personal courage are the hallmarks of great character.

Brian Tracy

#12. If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

#13. There's this belief with no merit that media with women at the center applies only to women, but media with men at the center applies to everyone.

Ilana Glazer

#14. Science and art, ... they seek the truth and the meaning of life, they seek God, [and] the soul, and when they are harnessed to passing needs and activities, ... then they only complicate and encumber life.

Anton Chekhov

#15. The instruments of power - arms, gold, machines, magical or technical secrets - always exist independently of him who disposes of them, and can be taken up by others. Consequently all power is unstable.

Simone Weil

#16. I knew that these people were not idiots, so the only thing I could attribute their insane response to was a profound lack of courage and intellectual integrity.

Patrick Lencioni

#17. Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear.
Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding
the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those
things in balance

Julian Assange

#18. Ned passed the next few minutes quietly not dying in his office, and was pleased with how well it was going. He'd stayed alive longer, but now that he was concentrating on it, it felt more like an accomplishment.

A. Lee Martinez

#19. The intellectual power, honesty, lucidity, courage, and disinterested love of the truth of the most gifted thinkers of the eighteenth century remain to this day without parallel. Their age is one of the best and most hopeful episodes in the life of mankind.

Isaiah Berlin

#20. We have no proof that Socrates ever existed. We only know from witnesses to his life that he did. Like Jesus, he never wrote anything down. It doesn't matter to me whether he did or not exist because we have his teachings, his method of thinking, and his extreme intellectual and moral courage.

Christopher Hitchens

#21. We all have restlessness in long-term relationships.

Helen Fisher

#22. I am, of course, greatly honoured to win the Booker, which is one of the great literary prizes in the world.

Richard Flanagan

#23. The truth is that most people lack the intellectual ability and courage to resist a popular movement, however pernicious and ill-considered.

Ludwig Von Mises

#24. What I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.

Salman Rushdie

#25. The root of the matter is a very simple and old fashioned thing ... love or compassion. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide for action, a reason for courage, an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty.

Bertrand Russell

#26. When we become silent, we become whole. And when we become whole, we become holy.

Swami Dhyan Giten

#27. The price paid for intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind.

John Stuart Mill

#28. Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying to think of something bad enough to say.
'God's nightgown!' she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved.

Margaret Mitchell

#29. False friends are like our shadow, keeping close to us while we walk in the sunshine, but leaving us the instant we cross into the shade.

C.N. Bovee

#30. I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.

Renee Fleming

#31. I believe in a world where there are no heroes, and I've read and know humanity a lot. There are moments that I admire in a person courage, intellect, hard work. These are the qualities I admire in an intellectual, in a writer, and there are so many people who have these things.

Orhan Pamuk

#32. It's fun talking to you ... like walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one's nervous but then courage takes over from somewhere.

Ivan Turgenev

#33. I heard I won 'best butt crack' on television recently. It's true. I did it, you guys. I made it. I wish I got an award, the actual award. What would it look like? Of course, it's a closed set.

Lisa Edelstein

#34. Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State. Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man - the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force.

Robert Green Ingersoll