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A spasm of irritation shook him. He could not determine where their machinations ended and his own over-active intelligence began the work of conjecture — it was the old philosophical stickler: how to distinguish the mind's knowledge of its objects from its experience of its own processes? In short, can we know anything, he muttered under his breath.

— Mary McCarthy The Groves of Academe (1952)

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Source: Ch. VII, pp. 408—409
Work: The Groves of Academe, 1952
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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