A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of intelligence.
Interpretation
This quote critiques the disconnect between intelligence and the behavior of some intellectuals.
Gilbert K. Chesterton's quote highlights the irony that those who are often considered the intellectual elite may lack genuine understanding or wisdom. It suggests that possessing knowledge does not necessarily equate to true intelligence or insight, and that some people in positions of intellectual authority may fail to grasp fundamental truths or exhibit critical thinking.
In practice
In a discussion about societal issues, this quote can be used to question the views of so-called experts.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.
The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them.
The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Madness does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed.
Do you know what religion is, Martin, my friend? -I can barely remember Lord's Prayer. -A beautiful and well-crafted prayer. Poetry aside, a religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends,myths, or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values , and rules with which to regulate a culture or a society.
Bigot: One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
A monk is a man who considers himself one with all men because he seems constantly to see himself in every man.
Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.
God knows what you've been doing, everything you've been doing. You may fool me, but you can't fool God!
The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but was only damaged and corrupted (βdeformedβ), and can be restored through God's grace. The scope of the integration is suggested by the descensus ad inferos, the descent of Christ's soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the individuation process.
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