Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

The people on my mum's side of the family are atheist intellectuals who are ueber-proper. My dad's side of the family are missionaries who are more comfortable sitting around in sweatpants than they are in a five-star restaurant. But those two influences converged in my life.

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage but just plain physical courage.

I've always been inspired by artists who have shown musical and intellectual curiosity and the courage to take risks.

Intellectuals try to keep going. But their situation is very difficult. Those who have had the courage to voice their opposition have often paid a very high price.

If we are to survive we must have ideas vision and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

I shall suggest on the contrary that all communication relies to a noticeable extent on evoking knowledge that we cannot tell and that all our knowledge of mental processes like feelings or conscious intellectual activities is based on a knowledge which we cannot tell.

Just as characteristic perhaps is the intellectual interdependence created through the development of the modern media of communication: post telegraph telephone and popular press.

Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill and now hacking is big business.

This film business perhaps more so in America than in Europe has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre but in America film audiences are young. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.