The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions the emotions - it becomes sterile silly and actually without substance.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.

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.

None speak of the bravery the might or the intellect of Jesus but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect political cunning and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.

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

Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.

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.

Two qualities are indispensable: first an intellect that even in the darkest hour retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth and second the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

I have three brothers and they're all into computers. They're all intellects. My mother would pay me a quarter a page to read a book and I couldn't make 50 cents. I just couldn't do it.

I shall suggest on the contrary that all communication relies to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell and that all our knowledge of mental processes like feelings or conscious intellectual activities is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.

Just as characteristic perhaps is the intellectual interdependence created through the development of the modern media of communication: post telegraph telephone and popular press.

Having played many roles of scientific intellect I do have an empathy for that world. It's been hard on me because flying the Enterprise for seven years in Star Trek and sitting in Cerebro in X-men has led people to believe that I know what I'm talking about. But I'm still trying to work out how to operate the air conditioning unit on my car.

Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill and now hacking is big business.

This film business perhaps more so in America than in Europe has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre but in America film audiences are young. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.

In this business my business I get to meet all kinds of incredible people fascinating people glamorous people and sexy people and highly intellectual people. And you meet them and you go 'interesting interesting interesting'. They're interesting but not very many people stop you in your tracks.

We as conservative intellectuals should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.

If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business because we'd be cynical. Well that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend confidante intellectual soul mate co-parent inspiration.

What is important then is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect but a certain kind of temperament the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

People tend not to use this word beauty because it's not intellectual - but there has to be an overlap between beauty and intellect.

Now I'm not saying I'm fashionable but there are sociological interests that matter to me things that are theoretical political intellectual and also concerned with vanity and beauty that we all think about but that I try to mix up and translate into fashion.

The fame that goes with wealth and beauty is fleeting and fragile intellectual superiority is a possession glorious and eternal.

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement the greatest source of visual beauty the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.