“Being an intellectual among intellectuals means nothing. There must be more.”

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”

“Most board meetings amount to little more than intellectual masturbation. They are ideas that cause thrills, chills, and satisfaction, but there is no impregnation. Nothing is ever born of them. It’s intellectual masturbation.”

“Nothing appeals to intellectuals more than the feeling that they represent 'the people'. Nothing, as a rule, is further from the truth”

“Among intellectual pursuits, one of the most useful is the recording of past events.”

“I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.”