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

Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.

Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way

Take a portion of wit, And fashion it fit, Like a needle, with point and with eye: A point that can wound, An eye to look round, And at folly or vice let it fly

The philosophical implication of race-thinking is that by offering us the mystery of heredity as an explanation, it diverts our attention from the social and intellectual factors that make up personality.