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There is no exercise of the intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. A philosophical doctrine begins as a plausible description of the universe; with the passage of the years it becomes a mere chapter — if not a paragraph or a name — in the history of philosophy.

— Jorge Luis Borges The Garden of Forking Paths (1942)

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Variants

There is no intellectual exercise which is not ultimately useless.

More quotes by Jorge Luis Borges

Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.

Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.

Borges Verbal (1999)

Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song.

The Divine Comedy (1977)

The Falklands thing was a fight between two bald men over a comb.

The minotaur more than justifies the existence of the labyrinth.

All Jorge Luis Borges quotes →

Attribution

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