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Now, these men weren’t idiots. They were geniuses who paid a high price for their genius because the rest of their thinking was other-world. A genius is someone who travels to truth by an unexpected path. Unfortunately, unexpected paths lead to disaster in everyday life.

— Alfred Bester The Men Who Murdered Mohammed (1958)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Alfred Bester

The man who gives his own decisions priority over society is a criminal.

The Stars My Destination (1956)

Millions for defense, but not one cent for survival.

The Stars My Destination (1956)

We always do what’s natural, only sometimes we shouldn’t do it.

The Stars My Destination (1956)

The mind is the reality. You are what you think.

The Demolished Man (1953)

Revenge is for dreams...never for reality.

The Stars My Destination (1956)

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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: Alfred Bester (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.