Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.
I don't consider myself an intellectual. And this is not one of my aims. But I admire intellectual people.
The biggest handicap in research is an ability to think outside the box. The handicap is being encumbered by all the conventional wisdom in a given field.
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
Human beings are accustomed to think of intellect as the power of having and controlling ideas and of ability to learn as synonymous with ability to have ideas. But learning by having ideas is really one of the rare and isolated events in nature.
An intellectual is a person who's found one thing that's more interesting than sex.
To be intellectual does not require one to be alienated and oppositional.
I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.
An intellectual is someone who avoids the mundane by lowering his handicap.