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A harmless hilarity and a buoyant cheerfulness are not infrequent concomitants of genius; and we are never more deceived than when we mistake gravity for greatness, solemnity for science, and pomposity for erudition.

— Charles Caleb Colton

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Intelligence

More quotes by Charles Caleb Colton

Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.

Lacon (1820)

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.

Lacon (1820)

Applause is the spur of noble minds, the end and aim of weak ones.

Lacon (1820)

That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.

Lacon (1820)

We often pretend to fear what we really despise, and more often to despise what we really fear.

Lacon (1820)

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Caleb Colton (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.