ENTP

Socrates

Philosopher, mentor of Plato and Xenophon

Socrates: "I have examined your position and determined your utterances to be mere brain-farts."

Socrates: "If you want to know your own soul, you must talk to other people."

Socrates: "From the time when I began to understand spoken words [I] have never left off seeking after and learning every ... thing that I could."

[Asked if he was not embarrassed to still be studying in his old age:]
Socrates: "I would be more embarrassed to be ignorant in my old age."

Cicero: "It was Socrates who brought philosophy down from the heavens and onto the earth."

Thomas McEvilly: "The aim of the Socratic ... dialectic is to awaken people from their dogmatic slumbers into intellectual curiosity."

ENTP

Leonardo da Vinci

Inventor and painter

[Last sentence of a mathematical theorem in his notebook:]
Da Vinci: "Perche la minesstra si fredda."
("Whatever - the soup is getting cold.")

Da Vinci: "People of accomplishment rarely sit back and let things happen to them. They go out in the world and happen to things."

Da Vinci: "It is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same faces and [the same] manners. [Why they do so] has often been a source of wonder to me."

Da Vinci: "A man ... should not be loath to hear every opinion ... and consider whether he who blames has good grounds to blame you, and if you think that he has, amend your ways; and if not ... show him by reasoning where his mistake lies."

Sigmund Freud: "My book on Leonardo is the only beautiful thing I have ever written."

ENTP

Benjamin Franklin

Inventor and politician

Franklin: "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for dinner."

Franklin: "I was charmed by the Socratic method [and] practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people ... into concessions [and] obtaining victories that [I did not] always deserve."

Thomas Jefferson: "It was one of the [things] which ... made Franklin [so] amiable: If he was urged to announce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts."

Richard Brookheiser: "Franklin was America's minister to France and the star of the diplomatic corps, but he [was] lazy, high-living and careless about corruption. ... [But then again] perhaps those qualities made him the perfect minister to France."

ENTP

Richard Feynman

Physicist

Feynman: "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty ... but I'm not absolutely sure of anything."

Feynman: "On the many occasions when I play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics."

Feynman: "You don't have to be responsible for the world that you're in."

Feynman: "In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another. The great problems ... have for this reason been discussed less and less in public. When we look at the past great debates on these subjects we feel jealous of those times, for we should have liked the excitement of such argument."

Stephen Hawking: "Quantum theories can be formulated in many different ways, but what is probably the most [accessible] description was given by Feynman."

ENTP

Voltaire

Philosopher and author, mentor of Frederick the Great

[On his deathbed, asked by a priest to renounce the Devil:]
Voltaire: "Now now, my good man. This is no time for making enemies."

Voltaire: "Almost everything is imitation."

Voltaire: "To hold a pen is to be at war."

Voltaire: "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong."

Voltaire: "Clever tyrants are never punished."

Voltaire: "The Quran is an unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder."

ENTP

Blaise Pascal

Mathematician and inventor

Pascal: "It is far better to know something about everything than to know all about one thing."

Pascal: "When we wish ... to show another that he errs ... notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He will then be satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken, but that he only failed to see all sides."

Pascal: "I have got friends among all parties."

Pascal: "Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest ... without diversion, without study."

Albert Beguin: "[Pascal's work is characterized by] the haste with which he throws himself into it, the suddenness with which he takes up something new, and the restless impatience that makes him abandon a study as soon as he has advanced the first principles."

ENTP

Niccolo Machiavelli

Philosopher and historian, author of 'The Prince'

Machiavelli: "Man must wear one face in public and another in private."

Machiavelli: "Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same patterns."

Machiavelli: "Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it."

Machiavelli: "It is necessary to be a fox to discover snares and a lion to terrify wolves. Those who rely simply on the lion do not understand."

Nietzsche: "[Machiavelli presents] the most serious events in a boisterous ... tempo of the gallop, and [with] the best, wantonest humor."

ENTP

David Hume

Philosopher and historian

Hume: "I have written on all sorts of subjects and yet I have no enemies, except indeed all the Whigs, all the Tories and all the Christians."

Hume: "I cannot but consider myself as a kind of resident or ambassador from the dominions of learning to those of conversation."

Hume: "Rousseau has not reflected very much. He has mostly felt."

Roderick Graham: "Hume was [at once] a philosopher [and a] darling of the Paris salons."

Le Chevalier Ramsay: "[Hume is not] capable of [concentrated] attention. ... He seems [to] spin thoughts out of [his] own brain without any regard for religion or tradition." [Upon meeting Hume around 1734.]

ENTP

John Stuart Mill

Philosopher

Mill: "If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing all mankind."

Mill: "I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative."

Mill: "Stupidity is much the same all the world over. A stupid person's notions and feelings may confidently be inferred from those which prevail in the circle by which the person is surrounded."

Mill: "The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay."

Mill: "[As a boy] I was disputatious, and did not scruple to give direct contradictions to things which I heard said."

ENTP

Edmund Burke

Philosopher

Burke: "The first [emotion] in the human mind is curiosity. ... Curiosity blends itself more or less with all our passions."

Burke: "Curiosity ... has an appetite which is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety."

Burke: "We are creatures designed for contemplation as well as action."

Burke: "It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do."

Burke: "Let [people's] experience of life ... be what it may. The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth."

Steven Pinker: "Burkean conservatism [is] a fine application of reason."

ENTP

Karl Popper

Philosopher

Popper: "One should always be willing to carry on the discussion in the opponent's terminology."

Popper: "For me, both philosophy and science lose all their attraction when they give up [straightforwardness]. Specialization may be a great temptation for the scientist. For the philosopher it is the mortal sin."

Popper: "[My preferred society] society is one in which men have learned to be ... critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence."

Popper: "The 'lofty depth' that Hegel ascribes to himself is an unmixed metaphor that works out to flatness."

Paul Johnson: "When Popper visited Cambridge, Wittgenstein got into argument with him where, in the heat of the moment, Wittgenstein had pointed at a firepoker at Popper to underline his point."

[Wittgenstein: "Give me an example of a moral rule?!"]
Popper: "Thou shalt not threaten visiting lecturers with pokers!"

ENTP

Bertrand Russell

Philosopher and mathematician, mentor of Wittgenstein

Russell: "Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."

Russell: "Marx was driven to change the world and I should say that my goal is the very opposite. My goal is to understand."

Russell: "This world is not something in which certainty is possible ... and therefore you must learn to act on things which you still very much doubt."

Russell: "Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau."

Thomas Sowell: "[Russell was subject to] wide mood swings [and] sought sweeping and dramatic 'solutions.'"

Julian Baggini: "Russell brought philosophy down to earth, with clarity and wit."

Ayn Rand: "Hume was merely the Bertrand Russell of his time."

ENTP

Werner Heisenberg

Physicist, student of Niels Bohr

Heisenberg: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

Heisenberg: "In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas - and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed."

Heisenberg: "Modern physics takes a definite stand against Democritus and for Plato."

Heisenberg: "The physicist ... has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. [But] even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached."

ENTP

John von Neumann

Mathematician and inventor of game theory

Von Neumann: "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations."

Von Neumann: "The whole [cosmos] seems to function without any direction, without any reference to usefulness, and without any desire to do things which are useful."

[Von Neumann's wife:] "His most characteristic trait was his boundless curiosity about everything and anything, his compulsive ambition to know, to understand any problem."

[Von Neumann's wife:] "Anything that would tickle his curiosity, he could not leave alone."

George Dyson: "Von Neumann was able to communicate with anyone, translate their problems ... into mathematics, find a solution, and translate this back into their language, bringing the results down to earth."

ENTP

Zeno of Elea

Greek philosopher, student of Parmenides

[Speaking of his famous paradoxes:]
Zeno: "Some try to mock Parmenides' assumption of stillness by arguing that it leads to absurd results. I pay them back in kind by demonstrating that their assumption of motion ... is even more absurd."

Zeno: "Socrates has an excellent grasp of the point of my work."

Robin Waterfield: "For Zeno there are no sacred cows. He demands that we think about all our assumptions, whether they are derived from common sense or from authority."

Bertrand Russell: "Zeno's paradoxes are immeasurably subtle and profound."

Diogenes Laertius: "[Zeno was] skilled to argue both sides of any question - [he was a] universal critic."

Greg Morgenson: "[In an argument] Zeno had a light touch and a flair for the absurd."

ENTP

Xenophanes

Greek philosopher, mentor of Parmenides

Xenophanes: "If an act is blameworthy it is blameworthy no matter who the perpetrayor; god or man."

Xenophanes: "All knowledge of this world is but an interwowen web of guesses."

Xenophanes: "Gods have certainty; humans must learn from inference."

[Empedocles: "It is impossible to find a wise man."]
Xenophanes: "Naturally - for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man."

Karl Popper: "I think that Xenophanes came closest to anticipating the ideas of the European Enlightenment."

Proclus: "Xenophanes published strange satires against all philosophers and poets because of a certain mean-spiritedness that he had."

Nietzsche: "[Unlike] Heraclitus and Plato who withdrew into solitude, Xenophanes sought out the public and scorned them."

ENTP

Catherine the Great

Empress of Russia

Catherine: "Fortune is not as blind as people imagine. It is often the result of a long series of precise and well-chosen steps that precede events and are not perceived by the common herd."

Catherine: "I [am] horribly curious."

Catherine: "One should argue without anger or passion."

[On her childhood:]
Catherine: "There was no boy more daring than I."

Markus Cruse: "There is no one Catherine. ... Any synthesis of Catherine ... remains incomplete. [In her memoirs] Catherine herself is elusive [even though] her pleasant, direct tone invites us to see her as honest and sincere."

ENTP

Steve Wozniak

Founder of Apple along with Steve Jobs

Wozniak: "Everything's changing, everything's dynamic. ... You get this idea, and you get another idea, and this doesn't work out and you have to replace it with something else."

Wozniak: "My friend Allen Baum ... said, 'Look, you can start Apple [without getting] into management and [still] get rich.' ... As soon as he said it ... that really freed me up. ... I didn't want to start a company. ... I wasn't going to tell other people how to do things."

Wozniak: "All the best things that I did at Apple came from ... not having done it before, ever. Every single thing that we came out with that was really great, I'd never once done that thing in my life."

Wozniak: "Creative things have to sell to get acknowledged. ... Steve Jobs didn't really set the direction of my ... designs but he did the more important part of turning them into a product that would [sell]."

Wozniak: "[Steve Jobs] always saw a way to make a quick buck off my designs. ... The lofty talk came much further down the line."

ENTP

Murray Rothbard

Economist, anarchist and libertarian

Rothbard: "The problem [with Adam Smith] is that he originated nothing that was true, and that whatever he originated was wrong."

Rothbard: "John Stuart Mill was the quintessence of soft rather than hardcore, a woolly minded man of mush."

Rothbard: "There is one good thing about Marx: he was not a Keynesian."

[Keynes: "In the long run we are all dead."]
Rothbard: "Keynes is dead, and we're all living in the long run."

Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard: "[He wrote in] clear prose, even when writing about very complex matters. How can a world that has the writings of Rothbard have so many who think highly of Foucault, Zizek and the post-modernists?"

John Palmer: "Austrian economics is Platonism for economists."

ENTP

Newt Gingrich

U.S. presidential candidate (R) and author

Gingrich: "I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much."

Gingrich: "Elected people aren't all that smart."

Gingrich: "If I'm going to be president, we're going to make mistakes. You can't have change on the level I want and not make mistakes."

Gingrich: "I read 'Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them' and I found frightening pieces that related to [myself]."

Gingrich: "[During his campaign] I think Obama worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating - none of which was true. ... He was being the person he needed to be in order to [win]. ... He was authentically dishonest."

David Gergen: "Gingrich [is] one of the smartest, most creative figures in politics. [But he is also] a bomb thrower who can be bombastic, erratic and an intellectual bully."

ENTP

Barack Obama

U.S. President (D) and author, married to Michelle Obama

[Asked why he wrote his Nobel Peace Prize speech himself:]
Obama: "I wanted to make an argument that didn't allow either side to feel too comfortable."

Obama: "[As an adolescent I was] arguing all the time, usually about me failing to abide by ... petty and arbitrary rules. I found that I could generally win these arguments."

Obama: "There are some things about being president that I still have difficulty doing. For example, faking emotion. Because I feel it is an insult to the people I'm dealing with."

Obama: "My wife makes fun of how routinized I've become. It's not my natural state. ... But at some point in my life I overcompensated."

Joe Biden: "[Obama] is an intellectual. ... He's not a moralizer."

ENTP

Henry Kissinger

U.S. Secretary of State (R)

Kissinger: "We tend to think that a problem is either economic or political or military. ... It is hard for us to understand that we have to be able to do military, political, economic and psychological things, all simultaneously."

[Speaking of George H.W. Bush:]
Kissinger: "He is ... soft and not sophisticated."

[His first mentor:] "He would squeeze me for my ideas the way one would squeeze a sponge."

Time Magazine: "The Kissinger wit can always be counted on."

Walter Isaacson: "Kissinger's furtive style and chameleon instincts make capturing his true colors difficult."

ENTP

Jon Stewart

Host of 'The Daily Show'

Stewart: "[My comedy is] irreverent [so] that people not take their dogma too seriously."

Stewart: "I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background. ... But that's not [my] primary motivating force."

College teammate: "Everybody was always a little afraid of messing with Jon because he was so quick-witted."

Eileen Katz: "Jon is best when he's playing off people or situations."

ENTP

Stephen Colbert

Host of 'The Colbert Report' where he plays a satirical character inspired by Bill O'Reilly

Colbert: "I have a healthy disrespect for authority."

Colbert: "I think one of my strengths [is] my ability to serve other people's ideas. I'm proud of my ability to understand what somebody else is trying to do."

Colbert: "Sometimes I really just want my natural curiosity to run wild with the guest. It kills me that I can't know more about what they're talking about."

Colbert: "Jon Stewart deconstructs the news. He's ironic and detached. I falsely construct the news and am ironically attached."

ENTP

Bill Maher

Talk show host

Maher: "We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels and free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep and conformists."

Maher: "I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?"

Maher: "Curious people are interesting people; I wonder why that is?"

ENTP

Sacha Baron Cohen

Comedian also known as Borat and Ali G, cousin of Simon Baron-Cohen

Baron Cohen: "[Borat is not a joke] on Kazahkstan. The joke is on the people who can believe that the Kazahkstan I describe can exist."

Baron Cohen: "I had the choice of either pursuing my studies and doing a PhD or doing something that was a bit more fun, so I decided that rather than sit alone in a library, I'd try and make people laugh."

ENTP

Terry Gilliam

Filmmaker and member of Monty Python

Gilliam: "I don't think I'm cynical. I'm skeptical."

Gilliam: "I like the idea of ... discovering new things all the time."

Gilliam: "It's not that ['Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'] is pro- or anti-drugs. The movie is just showing you both [sides], giving you the whole experience. Then you can decide for yourself."

Gilliam: "There's a side of me that's trying to compete with Lucas and Spielberg - I don't usually admit this publicly. ... They only go so far, and their view of the world is rather simplistic."

ENTP

John Cleese

Comedian and member of Monty Python

Cleese: "[Looking back on my education] I started to get angry. I thought: 'Why was I given this rubbish? This tenth-rate series of platitutes?'"

Cleese: "[My] message is: 'Work it out for yourselves, you're all individuals, and don't do what people tell you to do.'"

Cleese: "[Monty Python is a critique of] closed systems of thought. ... Systems by which, whatever evidence is given to a person, he merely adapts it. ... Once you have ... an idea [where] no contrary evidence can come in, I think it is very dangerous."

ENTP

Robert Downey Jr.

Actor

Downey: "I think I've been lucky, because my frequent appearances on Court TV have brought [my fame] to another level than 'just the actor guy.'"

ENTP

Rowan Atkinson

Comedian also known as Mr. Bean

Atkinson: "[For me] freedom of speech reigns just below the right to sustain life itself."

Atkinson: "The storms that surround Twitter and Facebook comments [show] ... how appallingly prickly and intolerant society has become of even the mildest adverse comment."

Atkinson: "I have a performing inclination."

Phil Trentham: "[Atkinson's series 'Blackadder' is] without doubt the best British comedy since Monty Python."

ENTP

Federico Fellini

Filmmaker

[Asked why his films have no plot:]
Fellini: "Life itself has no plot!"

Fellini: "I need order around me because I am a transgressor."

Fellini: "Reading Jung freed me from my guilt and inferiority [which stemmed from] my inability to organize."

Fellini: "[Freud] forces us to think, [Jung] permits us to imagine, to dream."

Stanley Kubrick: "[Fellini's] interviews are very amusing. He just makes jokes and says preposterous things that you know he can't possibly mean."

Martin Scorsese: "[Fellini] expanded our way of seeing and completely changed the way we experience [film]."

ENTP

Karl Lagerfeld

Fashion designer

Lagerfeld: "Everything I have not known before interests me more than everything I have seen in my life."

Lagerfeld: "I prefer to do all my work in the evening ... and [then] send everything [in]. I'm not [even] there in the studio. ... My work is very conceptual."

Lagerfeld: "I read 10 [books] at the same time. My favorite ... is Spinoza, but I have superficial books too, and magazines. ... I want to know everything. I want to see everything."

ENTP

Billy Crystal

Actor and awards show host

[On his job as a high school substitute teacher:]
Crystal: "I taught everything from English to auto shop. I'd be at the front of a class saying, 'Listen, I don't know anything about science, but these two guys walk into a bar...'"

[When asked if he was funny as a kid:]
Crystal: "I could always improvise."

ENTP

Stephen Fry

Actor and awards show host

Fry: "Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth ... than humor is a guarantee of superficiality."

Fry: "I like to wake up each morning and not know what I think, that I may reinvent myself in some way."

Fry: "I have always felt unable to ... become part of the tribe. ... I have always sniped or joked from the sidelines."

Fry: "Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is."

ENTP

Neil Patrick Harris

Actor and awards show host

Harris: "I think it's important ... to not just use your same tricks over and over."

Harris: "I enjoy darker sardonic wit more than knock-knock jokes."

Harris: "I'm like a plate-spinner, you know? I've got a lot of little plates that I'm trying to keep spinning at the same time."

ENTP

David Hyde Pierce

Actor

Hyde Pierce: "Never believe anything that anyone tells you. ... It's not as cynical as it sounds; it's just that people always say something for a reason ... [so] you can't take things at face value."

Hyde Pierce: "I'm pretty good ... on my feet with a live audience, and I enjoy that interaction."

Hyde Pierce: "I can vividly recall telling a joke in second grade and realizing it was funnier if I didn't laugh. I've been deadpan ever since."

The Independent: "Much of the success of 'Frasier' ... must be attributed to the on-screen chemistry binding Kelsey Grammer to his co-star David Hyde Pierce as Niles."

ENTP

Tom Hanks

Actor

Hanks: "I always had plenty of friends and lots of stuff to do, because I aggressively made those things happen."

Hanks: "I was never intimidated by change."

Hanks: "I try to do what I call the three E's - educate, entertain, and enlighten. ... If you don't entertain, no one will show up."

ENTP

Hugh Grant

Actor

Grant: "[Because] most actors really love acting, that blinds them to the fact that the [film they're making] is pretentious nonsense [or] commercial schlock. And because I rather hate acting, my eyes [see] something different."

Grant: "I cling to the fantasy that I could have done something more creative, like writing a book. But ... I don't have the discipline."

Grant: "A lot of people end up in jobs that aren't perhaps their absolute, true calling."

ENTP

Gillian Anderson

Actress

Anderson: "[In school] I was ... busy talking, insulting teachers and generally playing the clown."

Anderson: "I'm a more spontaneous person [than my X-Files character]. I laugh. I'm crass. I'm raunchy!"

[Asked if she ever had sexual tension with David Duchovny:]
Anderson: "I think everybody has sexual tension with David. *wink*"

ENTP

Elizabeth Olsen

Actress, sister of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen

Olsen: "It's good to have a conversation about two different opinions. Always having multiple opinions is a good thing, because then you can have a conversation and learn something from the conversation. The scary thing is when people don't have an opinion."

Olsen: "My favorite types of playwrights all ... play with ambiguity and not having all the answers in their stories."

Olsen: "[As a kid] I really loved ... Michelle Pfeiffer. I was completely in love with her."

Olsen: "I loved the way Josh Radnor writes. There is a style to it and it's intelligent and funny."

ENTP

Salma Hayek

Actress, dated Edward Norton

Hayek: "I keep waiting to meet a man who has more balls than I do."

Oprah: "You need only a few moments in Salma's presence to discover she's a woman set on defining herself - try to contain her in a box, and she'll lift off the lid, rise up, and just soar away every single time."

Oprah: "During every moment of our conversation, I found myself wanting to high-five her! Her candor, her honesty, her boldness, her fire - it all made me want to be more truthful with myself."

ENTP

Rose McGowan

Actress, dated Marilyn Manson

McGowan: "Why should I downplay myself to make someone else more comfortable?"

McGowan: "[When I was in school] the teachers didn't know what to do with me because I would sit and argue with them and take up everybody's time."

McGowan: "[Howard Stern said to me:] 'I can see why Manson likes you, but you're too much for me. You're just too much work.' And maybe he's right, but it's not like I'm trying to be challenging. I just think people get used to a diet of beige and they can't handle it when something shocking pink comes along."

McGowan: "I always thought I was more satanic than Manson."

ENTP

Diablo Cody

Screenwriter and author of 'Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper'

Cody: "I'm a pretty blunt person. ... I don't get asked to participate in the female-centric Hollywood events [because] I swing my dick around too much."

ENTP

Sarah McLachlan

Singer-songwriter

McLachlan: "I find it so fascinating ... why we behave the way we do [and] why we react to others the way we do."

McLachlan: "You [have to] take care of yourself because no one else is going to do it."

McLachlan: "Chrissie Hynde ... thought I was going to be all demure and sweet. ... I brought her to her knees in front of everybody."

ENTP

Celine Dion

Singer

Dion: "You have to go ahead and pursue all the possible and impossible ideas you can."

Carl Wilson: "There's something endearingly gawky and weird about her."

Fab Magazine: "Celine Dion is nothing if not honest - probably too honest."

Georges-Hebert Germain: "She [is] direct, relaxed, warm and quick to laugh."

ENTP

Jeremy Clarkson

Host of 'Top Gear'

Clarkson: "I've always been prepared to say what some people consider to be the 'unsayable.'"

Clarkson: "I quite like the [media] hating me. ... It's like annoying a teacher. Once they've shown signs of weakness you really can go for them."

ENTP

Siouxsie Sioux

(Siouxsie and the Banshees)

Sioux: "The Western way of singing is very predictable."

Sioux: "You can't consciously create something [like the punk movement]. It's a combination of chemistry, conditions, the environment, everything."

Sioux: "[Punk has become] so diluted because there's nothing being generated that's new; it's just recycled."

Sioux: "Performing is a very addictive drug, and my system screams out when I don't take it for a while."

Sioux: "I like ... working in a more spontaneous environment."

ENTP

Kevin Barnes

(Of Montreal)

Barnes: "A lot of the time you can finish [other] artists' sentences. That's obvious. That's obvious. It's always obvious."

Barnes: "I didn't want to make anything obvious. I wanted to surprise the listener."

ENTP

Cedric Bixler-Zavala

(The Mars Volta)

Bixler-Zavala: "I like ... a band shedding its skin every time there's a new record to be made. I wish more bands would do that."

[To a heckler in the audience:]
Bixler-Zavala: "You're a robot! You're a sheep! Me-e-e! Me-e-e! ... You watch TV way too much!"

Bixler-Zavala: "The [name] Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films. [It means] a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta."

ENTP

Bill Hicks

Stand-up comedian

Hicks: "The worst kind of non-smokers are the ones that come up to you and cough. That's pretty cruel, isn't it? Do you go up to cripples and dance too?"

ENTP

Matthew Inman

Cartoonist famous for 'The Oatmeal'

Inman: "My favorite example of the wrong kind of criticism is when someone says, 'It doesn't feel right.'"

Inman: "Inspiration isn't something you can schedule, harness, or control."

Inman: "Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived."

Inman: "The only thing Edison truly pioneered was douchebaggery."

ENTP

Maddox

Blogger famous for 'The Best Page in the Universe'

[Asked what his message is:]
Maddox: "The No. 1 thing is my resentment of ... group-think mentality."

Maddox: "When you're trying to send a message to someone, if you wrap it in humor it sticks a lot better. It's like the sugar with the medicine. People remember things when they laugh."

Maddox: "I first started the site ... because I wanted to spite my dumbass friends for having stupid ideologies."

Maddox: "[Name] a famous invention made by a woman. Give up? That's because there are none. ... All notable milestones of human achievement have come about because of men."

Maddox: "I've got pissing people off down to a science."

Maddox: "I get compared to Bill Hicks."

ENTP

Robert Nozick

Philosopher, author of 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia'

Nozick: "My temperament is to like interesting, new, bold ideas, and to try and generate them ... in contrast to those people whose main motivation seems to be to exclude certain ideas. They seem to want to be thought police."

Nozick: "There was something startling about the ... non-initiation of force principles that the [Ayn Rand followers] had, at the same time that they were diligently acting as thought police."

Nozick: "I, too, seek an unreadable book: Urgent thoughts to grapple with in agitation and excitement, revelations to be transformed by or to transform, a book incapable of being read ... a book, even, to bring reading to stop."

Nozick: "My great master was Socrates."

ENTP

Michel Foucault

Philosopher

Foucault: "The work of an intellectual is to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions."

Foucault: "I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. ... If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, would you ... write it? The game is worthwhile [only when] we don't know what will be the end."

Steven Olmsted: "Foucault idolized Nietzsche. But where Nietzsche believed in a 'Will to Power', Foucault believed in a 'Will to Knowledge.'"

ENTP

Slavoj Zizek

Philosopher

Zizek: "The only measure of true love is: You can insult the other."

Zizek: "Humanity is OK, but 99% of people are boring idiots."

Zizek: "What universities should do is not serve as experts to those in power who define the problems. We should redefine and question the problems themselves. Is this the right perception of the problem?"

Zizek: "My publisher will kill me for saying this, but I don't really care about most of the stuff that I've written about. Deep down, I only care about Hegel."

The Guardian: "[Is] Zizek a genius [or] the Borat of philosophy?"

ENTP

Camille Paglia

Author of 'Sexual Personae'

Paglia: "All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!"

Paglia: "Overconcentration on any one point is a distortion."

Paglia: "Life is not a tragedy but a comedy. .... Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals."

Paglia: "The girls I see on campuses are often innocuous, with completely homogenized personalities."

Paglia: "I have never once found a sentence in all of Foucault that interested me ... The man is a bastard."

Paglia: "Sartre is high literature."

Paglia: "[Due to Rousseau] liberal idealism [was] canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism."

ENTP

Thomas Sowell

Philosopher and economist, author of 'Economic Facts and Fallacies'

Sowell: "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance."

Sowell: "One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans - anything except reason."

Sowell: "Conserving something just because it's there has no appeal for me."

Sowell: "Coolidge read both Latin and Greek, and read Dante in the original Italian. ... It was said that the taciturn Coolidge could be silent in five different languages."

Myron Weiner: "One finishes reading Sowell awed with his ability to bring together so much material in such a readable fashion."

ENTP

Niall Ferguson

Historian, author of 'The Ascent of Money', married to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ferguson: "If a majority of people subscribe to a particular view, it pays to question it. It pays to think: maybe this is wrong."

Ferguson: "I think that it is important to be gregarious and that friendships are not just a leisure pursuit [but that] one does better work if one has a circle of friends that is active."

Ferguson: "The kind of performance I usually do [is] a cross between an academic lecture and stand-up [comedy]."

ENTP

Steven Pinker

Science popularizer and author of 'The Blank Slate', student of Noam Chomsky

Pinker: "[To understand the past] we need to discern patterns."

Pinker: "[There is a] universality of reason. ... If I want you to take me seriously, I can't act as if my interests are special because I'm me and you're not."

Pinker: "To condemn much is to understand little."

Pinker: "I grew up with the belief that God made the Jews as a light unto the nations and made the Gentiles because someone had to buy retail."

Richard Dawkins: "What a magnificent thinker and writer he is."

ENTP

Matt Ridley

Science popularizer and author of 'The Rational Optimist'

Ridley: "To understand is to perceive patterns."

Ridley: "A true scientist is bored by knowledge. It is the assault on ignorance that motivates him. ... The forest is more interesting than the clearing."

Ridley: "[Steven Pinker's 'The Blank Slate'] is the best book on human nature that I or anyone else will ever read."

Angela M. Hay: "[Ridley] tells how patent trolls who collect patents and then sue people who are not paying royalties on them are like cattle owners on the Rhine who collected tolls from passing boats. This is an example of [his] broad thinking."

ENTP

Daniel Dennett

Philosopher, author of 'Breaking the Spell'

Dennett: "The eye contains a big flaw: The retina is inside-out. No designer would make such a clumsy arrangement, and this is just one of the hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the process."

Dennett: "The Christians have been giving more and more ground: The Earth is no longer the center of the universe, and nor was it created in seven days. In 1000 years, the Christians will be claiming: 'It is the final proof of God's omnipotence, that he does not even have to exist!'"

ENTP

George Bernard Shaw

Playwright and journalist

Shaw: "Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week."

Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Shaw: "The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas."

Shaw: "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."

ENTP

Denis Diderot

Philosopher

Diderot: "A work [such as mine] demands more intellectual daring than is ... found in ages of pusillanimous taste."

Diderot: "All things must be examined, debated, investigated, without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings."

Diderot: "When [the philosopher] has no reason to judge, he knows how to live in suspension of judgment."

ENTP

Alexis de Tocqueville

Philosopher and author of 'Democracy in America'

Tocqueville: "History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies."

Tocqueville: "Men ... look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble ... and ... they may absolutely refuse to move at all."

Tocqueville: "Muhammad ... put into the Koran not only religious doctrines, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. ... That alone ... is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy."

Peter K. Minski: "In 1859, Tocqueville predicted that the democratic order would gradually be replaced by a 'big state'-solution which would deprive man of his free enterprise. That courtesy and manners would give way to informal forms of conduct. That freedom would be replaced by politically engineered equality. That in the future, the United States and Russia would vie for global dominance."

ENTP

Gloria Steinem

Feminist and author

Steinem: "Life is not [about] controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us."

Steinem: "If you're cynical, you're defeated for openers, [but] it's good to be skeptical."

Steinem: "[When I worked] at The Ladies' Home Journal [the editor] was so convinced that I was nothing like its readers (whom he described as 'mental defectives with curlers in their hair') that he used to hand me a manuscript and say, 'Pretend you're a woman and read this.'"

ENTP

Elena Kagan

U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Kagan: "What could be more fun than to engage with [highly intelligent people] and to be challenged by them and to try and persuade them?"

Kagan: "On almost every issue I'm open to being persuaded that I'm wrong."

Kagan: "I'm in favor of good ideas coming from wherever you can get them."

Arlen Specter: "[She has] shown a really admirable sense of humor."

ENTP

Susan Cain

Author of 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts'

Cain: "I'm insatiably curious about human nature."

Cain: "I'm constitutionally opposed to following rules for their own sake."

Cain: "[I] love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action."

[Asked why she wrote her book:]
Cain: "For the same reason that Betty Friedan published 'The Feminine Mystique' in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time - second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent."

ENTP

Marilyn vos Savant

Columnist with record-high IQ

Savant: "Be able to defend your arguments in a rational way. Otherwise, all you have is an opinion."

Savant: "If we don't keep our reasoning skills honed, we draw mistaken conclusions."

[On Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize:]
Savant: "When the rest of the world is this happy with our president, it can't be a good thing."

ENTP

Sean Parker

Founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook

Parker: "Remaining open to a large number of different possibilities I think is important, and [so is] being able to adapt."

Parker: "[I'm] a twisted half-breed: a rational-aesthete."

Forbes: "Parker is a human accelerant, an idea catalyst who, when combined with the right people, has fueled some of the most disruptive companies of the last two decades."

David Kirkpatrick: "He likes to talk, rapidly, intensely, and he likes to talk about ideas."

David Kirkpatrick: "A voracious reader with a deep fascination with politics, the self-taught Parker may pepper an analysis of current trends with a reference to ... the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution. And ... he will eagerly describe his theory on the history of media since Gutenberg."

ENTP

Chuck Palahniuk

Author of 'Fight Club'

Palahniuk: "My goal is to [charm] people into considering their world in a different way."

Palahniuk: "[In my work I try] to be clever and seduce people by entertaining them."

Palahniuk: "There's a big difference between 'not caring' or 'being nihilistic' about a topic and simply not being enrolled by the drama presented by other people."

Palahniuk: "Just because my characters choose not to react in standard, socially appropriate ways, that does not mean they don't care."

ENTP

Mark Steyn

Conservative political writer

Steyn: "You shouldn't become so ideological you can't see the comedy in your own side."

Steyn: "The 'experts' of the Western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner."

Steyn: "Often what's nuttiest [about Muslim propaganda] is that it's completely illogical: in the spring of 2002, I met many Arabs who believed simultaneously that (a) September 11 was pulled off by the Mossad and (b) it was a great victory for the Muslim people."

Steyn: "[Obama] sees the entire world as a great supporting cast in the Barack Obama show. His self-absorption and narcissism is incredible."

Steyn: "Multiculturalism is fraud. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society."

Barbara Kay: "[He writes with] quicksilver intelligence and merry iconoclasm."

ENTP

Bryan Caplan

Economist and libertarian, author of 'The Myth of the Rational Voter'

Caplan: "I often delve into subjects purely out of curiosity, as I have since my teens."

Caplan: "[My colleagues and I] argue non-stop, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Once we agree, it is time to change the subject."

Caplan: "[After reading Ayn Rand as a teenager] I did ... what I call 'trying on her ideas for size.' When opportunity presented itself - or when I cornered my parents or friends or teachers or random fellow students - I played devil's advocate."

Caplan: "Perhaps the greatest truth about human nature that you do not find in the typical economics textbook is that people are sheep."

ENTP

Johan Norberg

Philosopher, libertarian and former anarchist, author of 'In Defense of Global Capitalism'

Norberg: "The entrepreneur is the hero of our world. We do not really need the Frodos, the Luke Skywalkers, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayers."

ENTP

David Friedman

Economist, anarchist and libertarian, son of Milton Friedman

Friedman: "[I once witnessed someone say] 'You shouldn't contradict your elders.' ... That particular statement struck me as heresy, almost insanity. If your elders aren't right, of course you should contradict them!"

Friedman: "Ayn Rand [uses] passionate oratory to obscure a shift in [her] argument."

ENTP

Luc Ferry

Philosopher and French minister of education

Ferry: "French philosophy is nothing but the hyperbolic repetition of German philosophy: Foucault is the exaggeration of Nietzsche, Derrida is the exaggeration of Heidegger, Bourdieu is the exaggeration of Marx, and Lacan is the exaggeration of Freud."

Ferry: "What is a government ministry these days? - A glorified press agency! I would rather play some songs on my guitar."

ENTP

David Deutsch

Physicist and author of 'The Beginning of Infinity'

Deutsch: "Kuhn's theory suffers from a fatal flaw. It explains the succession from one paradigm to another in ... psychological terms, rather than [looking at] the objective merit of the rival explanations."

Deutsch: "Mathematical knowledge may [be] wonderfully explanatory ... but it cannot be certain."

Deutsch: "As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me."

Deutsch: "At least Popper achieved one thing: 'Inductivist' is now a term of abuse."

Deutsch: "I [always] hated memorizing facts."

Matthew Paris: "[Deutsch] merits comparison with Bertrand Russell."

ENTP

Jonathan Israel

Historian and author of 'Radical Enlightenment'

Israel: "It may be true that many, or even most, people remain untroubled by 'bad arguments' but there are always some individuals ... for whom intellectual consistency matters - and this applies especially to those [people] aspiring to change everything."

ENTP

Kenan Malik

Journalist and author on social issues

Malik: "It is the freedom to blaspheme, to transgress, to move beyond the pale, that is at the heart of all intellectual endeavor. ... In any society that is not uniform, grey and homogeneous, there are bound to be clashes of viewpoints."

Malik: "Tony Blair has often been called a man without a shadow but he is in fact more of a shadow without a man."

Malik: "Tariq Ramadan [is] a shallow thinker taken far too seriously [and trading in] pseudo-intellectualism."

Malik: "[Ramadan's] book ['Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism'] is comparable to [Dan Brown's] 'The Da Vinci Code', but at least 'The Da Vinci Code' did not claim to solve the problems of pluralism."

ENTP

Ken Miller

Critic of Intelligent Design, author of 'Only a Theory'

Miller: "All scientists enjoy interpreting their discoveries to the public."

Miller: "America has become the greatest scientific nation in the world, largely because the optimistic and iconoclastic character of science is a perfect fit for the open and vigorous social temperament of American society."

Miller: "Augustine made me realize that even in the fifth century A.D. there lived people who had the same ... difficulties with authority that I had."

ENTP

Satyajit Das

Critic of derivatives trading, author of 'Traders, Guns and Money'

Das: "It's silly to think that everybody in finance is 'evil' or engaged in fraud. ... [The problem] is 'groupthink.'"

Das: "The global economy is currently taking the 'botox' cure. A flood of money from central banks and governments - 'financial botox' - has temporarily covered up unresolved and deep-seated problems."

ENTP

Moses Maimonides

Philosopher

Maimonides: "[Man clings] to the opinions to which he has been accustomed from his youth; he likes them, defends them, and shuns the opposite views. This is one of the causes which prevent men from finding truth."

Maimonides: "It is sometimes necessary to ... partly disclose [something which] must partly be concealed. [But in doing so, one] must endeavor ... to prevent the reader from perceiving the [concealment]."

Leo Strauss: "Maimonides was a great man of the kind I would prefer to handle politics."

ENTP

Nagasena

Buddhist philosopher, 'the Socrates of Buddhism'

[Asked if there was anything that was the same from one moment to the next:]
Nagasena: "No! ... There is the universe it is all governed by change of things within the universe. That's all there is. Change is the constant; 'things' are not."

Nagasena: "As Nagasena I am known [but] this word 'Nagasena' is just a ... a conceptual term ... a mere name. For no real person can here be apprehended."

ENTP

Francis Galton

Multi-field genius, half-cousin of Charles Darwin

[Speaking about Galton's book on tropical exploration:]
Charles Darwin: "I admire the spirit and style of your book. What labors and dangers you have gone through: I can hardly fancy how you can have survived them."

ENTP

Fernand Braudel

Historian

Braudel: "Mountains are as a rule a world apart from civilizations. Their history is to have none, to remain almost always on the fringe of the great waves of civilization. Even the longest and most persistent influences, which may spread over great distances in the horizonal plane are but powerless to move vertically when faced with a mountain."

ENTP

Walter E. Williams

Economist and libertarian, author of 'Race and Economics'

Williams: "I was summoned for jury duty [and] the attorney asked me whether I could obey the judge's instructions. I answered, 'It all depends upon what those instructions are.' ... If I were on a jury back in the 1850s, and a person was on trial for ... assisting a runaway slave, I would vote for acquittal regardless of the judge's instructions [on the grounds] that slavery is unjust and any law supporting it is unjust. ... I was [then] dismissed from jury duty."

Williams: "Making economics fun and understandable [is] a challenge I love."

ENTP

Dan P. McAdams

Psychologist and author of 'The Person'

McAdams: "Most PhD programs ... are too focused, in my view. ... I have always had an interdisciplinary approach to things."

McAdams: "I came to psychology via Freud. ... I read 'Civilization and Its Discontents,' and I was hooked by the beauty of Freud's prose and by the force of his ideas, even as I knew that the ideas could not possibly be just right."

McAdams: "The best scholars and scientists are able to find passion for many different topics. [They are] interested in more than themselves."

ENTP

Andrew Potter

Author of 'The Authenticity Hoax'

Potter: "Authenticity is one of those ... words - like community, family, natural, and organic - that are only ever used in their positive sense ... and that tend to be rhetorical trump cards."

Potter: "Is there anyone out there who does not consider him or herself to be an 'antihero of authenticity'? ... Living inauthentically is always something other people do."

Potter: "Everyday life [is] boring. Standing in line at the store, waiting for the bus, sitting at stop lights - it's all dull as doing the dishes. Work is repetitious, unchallenging, and unoriginal. ... Our friends bore us with the same old stories, our lover bores us with the same old moves."

Potter: "Stephen Colbert has become one of the most influential political analysts in America."

ENTP

Brad Warner

Zen master, student of G.W. Nishijima, author of 'Hardcore Zen'

Warner: "You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game."

ENTP

J.H. van der Hoop

Psychiatrist

Van der Hoop: "[In using ideas from both] Freud and Jung ... I may be attacked by followers of both schools."

Van der Hoop: "[The questions that I raise] should be of interest to all who are not merely content to condemn and ignore the point of view which they do not approve of."

Van der Hoop: "[Though I am primarily a Freudian] I was analyzed by [Jung] over a period of six months."

Van der Hoop: "[The Thinking function] puts into man's possession the sum-total of knowledge [of] the species, but it reduces his capacity to work on things for himself, because he is no longer expected to make his own observations."

Van der Hoop: "[The man who relies on the Thinking function] has to accept a ready-made body of objective knowledge."

ENTP

Savitri Devi

Nazi mystic and author of 'The Lightning And The Sun'

Devi: "The majority of humanity, like liquids or doughy substances, takes the shape of the receptacles that contain it, or the mark of the seal that has stamped it."

Devi: "People ... resemble each other in nullity. They think that everything testifies to their independence and originality, yet, in fact, their reactions in similar circumstances are as identical."

Devi: "Any overestimation of oneself is a sign of stupidity."

Devi: "[Kant had] little imagination."

Devi: "Rousseau's life gives an impression of inconsistency, not to say instability. Poet rather than thinker, he did not live his life, he dreamed it. And above all, he did not live according to fixed principles."

ENTP

Dick Masterson

'Man coach' and self-professed chauvinist, author of 'Men Are Better Than Women'

Masterson: "[My purpose is] to expose the clumsy feminist dogma of equality - which reeks of desperation and failure at its core - and explore many theories and thoughts on the nature of men being better than women."

Masterson: "I do not hate women. I love women. I think women are special things that should be treasured as such - appreciated like one values a classic car."

Masterson: "Like most great things invented ... [my site] was started by a man shooting his mouth off and promising more than he could deliver."