Robert Musil - Intellectual Quotes

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… the restricting of intellectual and spiritual needs to the mania of progress

Robert Musil
In their field they [mathematicians] do what we ought to be doing in ours. Therein lies the significant lesson … of their existence. They are an analogy for the intellectual of the future.

Robert Musil
There is nothing more deplorable than those skeptics and reformers, liberal priests and humanistically-oriented scholars, who moan about soullessness, barren materialism, what is unsatisfying in mere science, and the cold play of atoms, and renounce intellectual precision, which is for them only a slight temptation. Then, with the help of some alleged emotional knowledge to satisfy the feelings, and with the necessary harmony and rounding-out of the world picture, all they invent is some universal spirit: a world-soul, or a God, who is nothing more than the world of the academic petite bourgeoisie which gives rise to him; at best, an oversoul who reads the newspaper and demonstrates a certain appreciation of social questions.

Robert Musil
The novel is called upon like no other art form to incorporate the intellectual content of an age.

Robert Musil
Ideology is: intellectual ordering of the feelings; an objective connection among them that makes the subjective connection easier.

Robert Musil
Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life.

Robert Musil