INTJ

Isaac Newton

Physicist

Newton: "I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

[Addressing a critic:]
Newton: "I have studied these things - you have not."

Eva Brann: "If Heraclitus was a physicist, he, like Newton, was at the same time also a mystic."

Keynes: "Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians."

Steven Pinker: "Newton was hardly a humble man."

Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Isaac Newton [is] the smartest person ever - ever - to walk the face of this earth."

INTJ

Karl Marx

Philosopher, student of Hegel

Marx: "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

Marx: "Philosophy is to science as masturbation is to sex."

Marx: "I admire [Darwin's theory] because it serves as a basis in the natural sciences for the class struggle."

[Addressing a critic:]
Marx: "Who would want to have to talk always with intellectual skunks [like you] who study only for the purpose of finding new dead ends in every corner of the world!"

Marx: "Do not make Heraclitus pay for being the most succinct of philosophers by [burdening him] with prolix commentaries."

INTJ

Ayn Rand

Author of 'Atlas Shrugged' and libertarian

Rand: "While animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself."

Rand: "Love is not self-sacrifice, but the assertion of your own needs and values. It is for your own happiness that you need the person you love."

Rand: "Ever since Hume and Kant ... philosophy has been striving to prove that man's mind is impotent. ... [That is] treason."

Rand: "I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

Rand: "In philosophy, I can only recommend the three A's: Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand."

INTJ

Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosopher

Nietzsche: "What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, power itself in man. What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness."

Nietzsche: "One should not know more about a thing than one can digest creatively."

Nietzsche: "Active, successful natures shun the dictum 'know thyself' and follow the commandment: 'Will thyself.'"

Nietzsche: "Not all men ought to be free. There are many who threw off their final worth when they threw off their bondage."

INTJ

John Maynard Keynes

Economist

Keynes: "The country does not need an iron-cast economic doctrine as long as it has me."

Keynes: "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking."

Keynes: "[Hayek's work] is an extraordinary example of how, starting with a mistake, a remorseless logician can end up in bedlam."

Roy Harrod: "Keynes [spoke] on a great range of topics, on some of which he was thoroughly an expert, but on others of which he may have derived his views from the few pages of a book at which he had happened to glance. The air of authority was the same in both cases."

John Mackey: "Keynes was such a brilliant and fascinating guy that he hypnotized this whole generation of economists."

INTJ

Mark Zuckerberg

CEO of Facebook

Zuckerberg: "We're going to change the world."

Zuckerberg: "I think that the next five years are going to be characterized by widespread acknowledgment [of Facebook's] way."

[Asked about the users who were dissatisfied with Facebook's privacy settings:]
Zuckerberg: "Having two identities for yourself [is] a lack of integrity."

Sheryl Sandberg: "He is shy and introverted and he often does not seem very warm to people who don't know him."

[On his first impression of Zuckerberg:]
Sean Parker: "He had imperial tendencies."

Peter Thiel: "Yahoo tried to buy Facebook for $1 billion. ... Many people thought Mark was crazy for not selling. But he always had a plan and a vision."

INTJ

Bobby Fischer

Chess champion

Fischer: "Most people are sheep, and they need the support of others."

[On why he quit school at 16:]
Fischer: "You have to mix with all those stupid kids. And the teachers are even stupider than the kids."

Fischer: "Nobody has single-handedly done more for the U.S. image than me. ... When I won the World Championship, the U.S. had an image of a football country, baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country. I turned all that around single-handedly."

Boris Spassky: "Bobby ... is an honest and good natured man [but] absolutely not social. He is not adaptable to everybody's standards of life. He has a very high sense of justice and is unwilling to compromise."

Garry Kasparov: "Fischer had no one besides himself to draw him up to the heights he reached. ... I regard him as a mythological [creature] of sorts."

INTJ

Garry Kasparov

Chess champion and political activist, author of 'How Life Imitates Chess'

Kasparov: "Without a goal [maneuvering is] aimless. You might be a master tactician, but you'll have no sense of strategy."

Kasparov: "[People] quickly discard apparently outlandish ideas and solutions. ... The failure to think creatively is as much self-imposed as it is imposed by ... our jobs and our lives."

Kasparov: "[Up until] I first played for the chess world championship ... everything had come easily for me. Winning had simply become the natural state of things."

Kasparov: "[In chess] I was too aggressive due to overconfidence."

Kasparov: "[Chess moves that have] an extra charge of fantasy can startle your competition into making mistakes."

Kasparov: "If you daydream a little about what you'd like to see happen, sometimes you find that it is really possible."

INTJ

John Adams

U.S. President

Adams: "Thanks to God that he gave me stubbornness when I know I am right."

Adams: "Nineteen twentieths of [mankind is] opaque and unenlightened. Intimacy with most people will make you acquainted with vices and errors and follies enough to make you despise them."

Adams: "I would not advise any one to study [philosophy] longer than to convince him that he may devote his time to more satisfactory and more useful pursuits."

Abigail Adams: "I acknowledge that you very seldom deal in flattery."

New York Times: "At once ambitious and alienated ... he was a decidedly contrary genius."

INTJ

Isaac Asimov

Science fiction writer and science writer

Asimov: "Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do."

Asimov: "It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor."

Asimov: "I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing - to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might ... get me a Pulitzer prize."

Asimov: "The only people I ever met whose intellects surpassed my own were Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky."

INTJ

Christopher Hitchens

Journalist

Hitchens: "Those who are determined to be 'offended' will discover a provocation somewhere. We cannot possibly adjust enough to please the fanatics, and it is degrading to make the attempt."

Hitchens: "Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish."

Hitchens: "I admire Trotsky because he combined in himself the role of man of action and man of ideas."

June Thomas: "His obituaries were particularly refreshing, because he refused to moderate his opinion of the subject simply because he or she had died."

INTJ

H.L. Mencken

Journalist

Mencken: "If ever a man is to achieve anything like dignity, it can happen only if superior men are given absolute freedom to think what they want to think and say what they want to say."

Mencken: "People constantly speak of 'the government' doing this or that, as they might speak of God doing it. But the government is really nothing but a group of men, and usually they are very inferior men."

Mencken: "Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice."

[Speaking about the history of the U.S.:]
Mencken: "Lincoln marked the half-way post on the road to the sewers."

[In his obituary of Franklin D. Roosevelt:]
Mencken: "He had every quality that morons esteem in their heroes."

INTJ

Heraclitus

Greek philosopher - "The Dark One"

Heraclitus: "Most men have sated themselves like cattle. ... Greater men are allotted greater destinies."

Heraclitus: "One man is worth ten thousand if he is extraordinary."

Heraclitus: "Fools get excited no matter what you tell them."

Constantine J. Vamvacas: "Heraclitus does not demonstrate but manifest; he does not discuss ... but weaves an image."

Constantine J. Vamvacas: "[Heraclitus'] meanings are not crystallized but inhere in integral images and visions, grasped as an indissoluble whole."

Constantine J. Vamvacas: "[Heraclitus'] thought is at once both highly abstract ... and extremely concrete."

Daniel W. Graham: "Heraclitus liked to abuse his predecessors, and he tends to radically rework the material he inherits."

INTJ

Martin Luther

Theologian and Protestant reformer

Luther: "I [am] slave to the authority of no one!"

Luther: "As to my always conducting discussions with ardor ... [I am simply] overpowered by the force of truth when ... compelled to the discussion."

[Responding to one of his critics:]
Luther: "Perhaps you want me to die of unrelieved boredom while you keep talking."

[Responding to another of his critics:]
Luther: "You should not write a book before you have heard an old sow fart; and then you should open your jaws with awe, saying, 'Thank you, lovely nightingale, that is just the text for me.'"

Luther [to Erasmus:] "Do not think that I [argue] more according to my temper, than according to my principles. I will not suffer it to be insinuated."

INTJ

John Nash

Mathematician

Nash: "Don't ... depend on current fashion or ... popular opinion."

Nash: "I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy."

Nash: "[One] could think of Zarathustra as simply a madman. ... But without his 'madness' [he would] have been only another of the millions or billions of human individuals who have lived and then been forgotten."

Sylvia Nasar: "Even as a student, his indifference to others' skepticism, doubt, and ridicule was awesome."

Sylvia Nasar: "His heroes were solitary thinkers and supermen like Newton and Nietzsche."

Sylvia Nasar: "Nash acquired his knowledge [not] from studying ... other mathematicians ... but by rediscovering their truths for himself. ... Einstein once chided him for wishing to amend relativity theory without studying physics."

INTJ

Nikola Tesla

Inventor

Tesla: "My ideas have revolutionized the industries of the United States."

Tesla: "The progressive development of man [has as its] ultimate purpose the complete mastery of mind over the material world."

Tesla: "The world was not prepared for [my system]. It was too far ahead of time, but ... in the end [it will be] a triumphal success."

Tesla: "If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor."

John Stone: "[Everyone] misunderstood Tesla. We thought he was a dreamer. ... He did dream [but he made] his dreams come true. [He had] visions but they were of a real future, not an imaginary one."

INTJ

G.W.F. Hegel

Philosopher, mentor of Marx

Hegel: "It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value."

Hegel: "Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob."

Hegel: "The force of mind is only as great as its expression."

Hegel: "What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational."

Hegel: "Heraclitus is the one who ... first grasped Being. ... The origin of philosophy is to be dated from Heraclitus."

Hegel: "To be a follower of Spinoza is essential. ... You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all."

Hegel: "Kant is a rabid expression of what Socrates started."

Isaak Winkel-Holm: "[In Hegel's writing] multiple metaphors collide."

INTJ

Jane Austen

Author of 'Pride And Prejudice'

[Referring to the Napoleonic Wars:]
Austen: "How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!"

Austen [in a letter to her sister]: "You are very kind in [suggesting] presents for me to [give] ... but as I do not choose to have generosity dictated to me, I shall not [give anything] till the first thought of it has been my own."

Austen [in a letter to her sister]: "You deserve a longer letter than this; but it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve."

INTJ

Jean-Paul Sartre

Philosopher and Marxist ideologue, dated Simone de Beauvoir

Sartre: "As far as men are concerned, it is not what they are that interests me but what they can become."

Sartre: "You are nothing else but what you live. ... A man is no more than a series of undertakings [and] the sum of the organization that constitutes these undertakings."

Sartre: "L'enfer, c'est les autres."
("Hell is other people.")

Paul Gallagher: "It was Sartre's [political] acceptance of Russia's concentration camps that proved too much for Camus. He wanted Sartre to denounce them, in the same way they had once denounced the German concentration camps. Sartre refused."

INTJ

Stephen Hawking

Physicist

Hawking: "My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe."

Hawking: "Philosophy is dead. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge."

Hawking: "If ever a new observation is found to disagree [with a theory], we have to abandon or modify the theory. At least that is what is supposed to happen, but you can always question the competence of the person who carried out the observation."

Hawking: "[Immanuel Kant's works are] very obscure."

INTJ

Augustus

Emperor of Rome, adoptive son of Julius Caesar

Augustus: "I found Rome brick and left it marble."

[Referring to the installation of his dictatorship:]
Augustus: "At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic."

[On a diplomatic mission to Egypt when asked if he wanted to see the tombs of the pharaohs:]
Augustus: "I came to see a king, not a row of corpses."

Jürgen Malitz: "Young Augustus attempted to write poetry, but later burned the manuscripts ... and [resigned himself] to supporting poetry as a patron."

Tacitus: "In spite of their past accomplishments, Augustus despised the Greeks and extended his favor to the strongest of his day."

INTJ

James Cameron

Filmmaker

Cameron: "People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right."

Cameron: "I think you have to have a fairly strict methodology in dealing with ... people."

The Independent: "He is notorious on set for his uncompromising and dictatorial manner."

Sigourney Weaver [on 'Aliens']: "He really does want us to risk our lives and limbs for the shot."

Linda Hamilton [on 'Terminator']: "James Cameron is definitely on the side of the machines."

INTJ

Arnold Schwarzenegger

U.S. Governor (R) and actor

Schwarzenegger: "I think anything we do, you need an enormous ego to do that. ... The ego has to be satisfied."

Schwarzenegger: "My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. ... Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave."

Schwarzenegger: "[Growing up] I was one who did not conform and whose will could not be broken."

Schwarzenegger: "I consider myself an expert in looking into a particular idea or goal and then going after it without anything else in mind."

INTJ

Russell Crowe

Actor

Crowe: "I want to do movies that have a strong sense of purpose."

Crowe: "My family's been in the [movie] business for three generations. I'm just the first one stupid enough to stand in front of the cameras!"

Crowe: "I wasn't one of those ooh-la-la-honey-lovey-darling performance sort of kids."

[Interviewer: "You can be testy with the media."]
Crowe: "Yeah, well, why not? Most of the people who work in your job are a pack of bloody idiots."

INTJ

Jay-Z

Rapper, married to Beyonce

Jay-Z: "[In my music I adopt a] technique and style to make sure that it [reaches] as many people as possible without losing its basic integrity."

Jay-Z: "I love metaphors, and for me hustling is the ultimate metaphor for the ... human struggle: ... The struggle to win and to make sense of it all."

Jay-Z: "It's hard to beat the entertainment value of people who deliberately misunderstand the world, people dying to be insulted, running around looking for a bullet to get in front of."

Zack O'Malley: "People who've spent time with Jay-Z ... note his expansive intellectual curiosity."

Jon Stewart: "[He is] just a fascinating artist to ... talk to."

Barack Obama: "Every time I talk to Jay-Z ... I enjoy how he thinks."

INTJ

Jodie Foster

Actress

Foster: "I always play strong women. ... I'm not sure I know how to play weak. I really don't know how."

Foster: "If I fail, at least I will have failed my way."

Foster: "I want to change the system from within the system. And that means focusing and specializing."

Foster: "[As a child actor I thought that acting] was a dumb job. Somebody else writes something and then you repeat it. How dumb is that?"

Foster: "Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from."

Mel Gibson: "[She is] strong, honest [and has a] complexity that I would never presume to decipher but merely admire."

INTJ

Julia Stiles

Actress

Stiles: "I tend to gravitate toward the more powerful roles. As opposed to the doe-eyed girl who bats her eyelashes ... because that kind of makes me want to vomit."

Stiles: "People confuse bluntness with bitchiness."

Stiles: "I [am] very heady and intellectual and that's kinda contrary to what makes a good actor. ... [When reading scripts I am] understanding the scripts but not necessarily feeling them in a visceral way."

Stiles: "Sometimes I have these abstract ideas and then lose track of myself. I [can] go on and on...!"

The Guardian: "One thing is clear when you're talking to Stiles: She knows her mind. She's impressively smart, and you get the feeling that ... she doesn't suffer fools gladly."

INTJ

Ashley Olsen

Actress and fashion designer, sister of Mary-Kate Olsen and Elizabeth Olsen

Olsen: "I've always been [both] a business and creative person. That's the way my brain works."

Olsen: "It's important to stay true to yourself in order to be a successful leader in anything. [One shouldn't] conform to what others [are] doing."

Olsen: "[I am a] perfectionist. ... If [I] step away, it stops working. I know it sounds controlling, but that's how it has to be."

Marie Claire Magazine: "Ashley's voice ... slices through the chatter like steel. At 21, she is a remarkably clear and focused executive, not at all the type to be talked into things."

Marie Claire Magazine: "[She comes across as] very much the master of her own fate."

INTJ

Elyse Sewell

Reality show contestant

[On her participation in 'America's Next Top Model':]
Sewell: "I was (am) arrogant and held (hold) a low opinion of most of the show. ... [The] stupidity of some of the stuff I was commenting on meant that the bulk of my ... soundbytes were derogatory."

[Asked why she deserved to win:]
Sewell: "I don't think that it's acceptable to say that anyone deserves to win this competition. It's really not a basic human right to get a modeling contract."

Sewell: "Tyra said that I was arrogant and condescending in my speech with others, and I think she was right."

Kimora Lee Simmons: "Elyse [comes across] like a big know-it-all."

Tyra Banks [to Sewell:] "I think you are sooo smart, but one thing about intelligence is that it can intimidate people, and there's a way to use that intelligence that doesn't feel like you're maybe putting down other people."

INTJ

Roger Waters

(Pink Floyd)

Waters: "I'm perfectly happy being a leader."

Waters: "I know I can be an oppressive personality because I bubble with ideas and schemes, and in a way it [is] easier for [others] simply to go along with me."

Waters: "I'm not ... comfortable [improvising or] playing to small groups of people. I'm not really that kind of troubador. I don't really have that skill. ... I'm more into writing, thinking [and] producing."

[Official band website bio:] "[The album 'The Wall'] was largely a lyrical piece. Roger Waters drove the project and the [other band members] fitted in. They ceded their vision to his increasingly personal direction."

[Official band website bio:] "[While the album 'Dark Side Of The Moon' demonstrated] Roger Waters' talents as both lyricist and conceptualist, it was also a musical tour de force by David Gilmour."

INTJ

Thomas Malthus

Economist

Malthus: "The finest minds seem to be formed rather by efforts at original thinking [and] by endeavors to ... discover new truths than by passively receiving the impressions of other men's ideas."

Malthus: "[I could have collected] a greater number of facts in elucidation of [my] general argument. ... However ... little more appears to [me] to be necessary than a plain statement."

J.M. Keynes: "Malthus' 'Essay on the Principle of Population' is a work of ... genius. ... It is bold and rhetorical in style with much bravura of language and sentiment."

Charles Darwin: "After I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and ... it at once struck me that ... I had at last got a theory by which to work."

Rob Guralnick: "Both Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of natural selection after reading Malthus. Unlike Malthus, they framed his principle in purely natural terms both in outcome and in ultimate reason. By so doing, they extended Malthus' logic further than Malthus himself could ever take it."

INTJ

Paul Krugman

Economist

Krugman: "I'm tempted to say I told you so."

Krugman: "One criticism I face fairly often is the assertion that I must be dishonest ... because the way I describe it, I'm always right while the people who disagree with me are always wrong. And not just wrong, they're often knaves or fools. How likely is that? But may I suggest ... that there's another possibility? Maybe I actually am right."

Krugman: "Coming up with a good idea, with an insight into the way the world works that is really new and that you really believe in, is a deeply satisfying experience."

Krugman: "We all want power."

Krugman: "'Shrill' is everybody's favorite word for me."

John H. Cochrane: "Most of [what Krugman writes] is just a calumnious personal attack on an ever-growing enemies list."

Marvin Richardson: "When confronted with the argument that his enticement to increase military spending might lead to more wars, Krugman responded: 'Economics is not a morality play.'"

INTJ

Joseph Stiglitz

Economist

Stiglitz: "I have not been content just to let others translate [my] ideas into practice. I have [done] so myself."

Kenneth Rogoff: "I fail to detect a single instance where [he admits] to having been even slightly wrong about a major real world problem."

The American Prospect: "Taken together, Stiglitz and Krugman occupy something like the ... role that John Maynard Keynes [once] played. [Their] sheer intellect and deftness at translating abstruse economics into wry English [have] won [them all] a wide readership."

INTJ

Martin Heidegger

Philosopher, student of Husserl, dated Hannah Arendt

Heidegger: "The future of the West depends upon the proper understanding of metaphysics as presented in my thought."

Heidegger: "The possible ranks higher than the actual."

Heidegger: "Reason, glorified for centuries, is the stiff-necked adversary of [true] thought."

[Asked what he thought of Sartre's interpretation of his work:]
Heidegger: "How can I read that drivel?"

Heidegger: "Mussolini and Hitler have [both] learned from Nietzsche."

Karl Lowith: "He left no doubt about his faith in Hitler."

Karl Popper: "[Heidegger attributes] prophetic powers ... to himself. ... That is the only way his [theory of epistemology can hold up]."

INTJ

Elon Musk

Founder of SpaceX

Musk: "My career has been focused on finding practical, effective solutions to real-world problems."

Musk: "[I started SpaceX because] if we're not on a path of ... expanding to the stars, then what we're effectively saying is [that] we're going to consign ourselves to Earth until an extinction event wipes us out."

[His brother:] "Elon's psyche is tied up in the idea of changing the world."

Jon Stewart [to Musk:] "I am astonished at your entrepreneurial spirit, your tenacity, and your ability to get things done."

Steve Jurvetson: "I don't think I've ever seen an entrepreneur with so much resolve."

INTJ

Ray Dalio

Investor

Dalio: "The people who really change the world are the ones who see what's possible and figure out how to make it happen."

Dalio: "Understanding reality gives us the power to get what we want out of life."

Dalio: "Finding out [about my] personal weaknesses ... is good because I then can deal with [them] so they don't stand in my way."

Dalio: "Reacting emotionally ... can undermine your effectiveness. ... Staying rational will serve you well."

INTJ

Betty Friedan

Feminist and author of 'The Feminine Mystique'

Friedan: "[I knew I was] going to transform society. ... I just knew what had to be done."

Friedan: "Physically and emotionally ... I may have been a mess, but I always could count on my mind."

Friedan: "Though I disdained ... the emptiness and painful prejudices of country club snobbery, a part of me still wanted to be asked to join the country club and thus be truly free to disdain it."

Friedan: "Maybe I was obstreperous and a troublemaker, but a constructive one, surely?"

INTJ

Susan Sontag

Literary theorist

Sontag: "It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared; but suffering that degrades."

Sontag: "Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility."

Sontag: "Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas."

INTJ

Friedrich Schiller

Poet and playwright, student of Goethe

Schiller: "All things must; man is the only creature that wills."

Schiller: "He who cannot rule is a slave."

Schiller: "It hinders the creative work of the mind if the intellect examines too closely the ideas as they pour in."

Schiller: "The strong man is strongest when alone."

Schiller: "It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so."

Schiller: "Power is the most persuasive rhetoric."

INTJ

Theodore Dalrymple

Conservative pundit, psychiatrist and author

Dalrymple: "When patients [confided] in me that they were suffering from low self-esteem, I used to reply that at least, then, they had got one thing right: They had valued themselves at their true worth."

Dalrymple: "Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings."

Dalrymple: "There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind."

Dalrymple: "Permanent adolescence has been [Christopher Hitchens'] goal, and I think he has achieved it."

INTJ

Samantha Power

Author and advisor to Barack Obama

Power: "Cold-blooded reason is a tool that you can employ on behalf of what you believe in."

Power: "Unless you can unclog your ears and actually hear the other side's argument, you will be unable ... to refute them."

Leon Wieseltier: "She's pathologically intense. She never lets up."

INTJ

Lou Salome

Psychoanalyst, student of Freud, dated Rainer Maria Rilke

Salome: "I will most certainly fashion my life in my own way, whatever may come of it."

Salome: "[Nietzsche and I] understand each other so well. ... How similarly we think and feel, and how we take the words out of each others' mouths."

Salome: "After social intercourse or being with friends I [always] felt I had to [withdraw] almost as if I needed ... to resolve for myself what had happened."

Sigmund Freud [to Salome:] "It is quite evident ... how you strive prophetically to unite ... fragments into a structural whole."

Anais Nin: "She did not wait for other women to think as she did, but went out and created her own freedom."

INTJ

Alcibiades

Greek general, heir to Pericles, tried to become the boyfriend of Socrates

Alcibiades: "If we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves."

Alcibiades: "Socrates tells me that I am ruining my soul by dedicating myself to politics, when I should be pursuing a life of philosophy. But whenever Socrates is not around, I find myself dragged back into the fray chasing after grandeur."

Plutarch: "Among the many strong passions of his real character, the one most prevailing of all was his ambition and desire for superiority."

INTJ

Juvenal

Roman satirist

Juvenal: "Bitter poverty has no harder pang than that it makes men ridiculous."

Juvenal: "[The Romans] were once so mighty, and now all they can think of is their bread and circuses."

Juvenal: "The common people think of nothing but stroking their patrons' egoes. Those who have no verbal gifts send their wives to do the stroking."

Juvenal: "Be rich to yourself and poor to your friends."

INTJ

Tertullian

Church father and polemicist against non-Christians

[When confronted with the notion that it is impossible for a dead man (i.e. Christ) to rise again:]
Tertullian: "Certum est, quia impossibile."
("It is impossible and therefore certain.")

INTJ

Paracelsus

Alchemist

Paracelsus: "I can prove to you what you cannot prove. ... You are not learned or experienced enough to refute even a word of mine."

Paracelsus: "If you have been given a talent, exercise it freely and happily like the sun: give everyone from your splendour."

Paracelsus: "What would it benefit a physician if he discovered the origin of the diseases but could not cure or alleviate them?"

INTJ

Gudo Nishijima

Zen master, mentor of Brad Warner

Nishijima: "When you practice meditation, you extend yourself throughout the universe."

[When asked about his ethics:]
Nishijima: "We are living in the here and now, so we must find rules which can be used here and now. ... True rules must work in the real world."

Nishijima: "Dogen's dialectic about reality is rather like Hegel's."

INTJ

Pat Condell

Youtube video blogger

Condell: "I'm not saying [religion] doesn't have its uses. Personally, I turn to it whenever I want my intelligence insulted."

Condell: "Some atheists dislike my videos because they find them too insulting. ... I don't think it's possible to be too insulting to a religious fundamentalist - though I'm always willing to try."

Richard Dawkins: "Thank goodness he is on our side."

INTJ

Lone Frank

Science writer

Frank: "We humans are nothing but bags of neurons."

Frank: "A girlfriend called me 'brutally honest'. A judgment that made me feel all warm inside and happy with myself until she put her hands on her hips and shouted: 'It's cruel! Don't you understand that people despise honesty?'"

Frank: "In his book 'The Moral Landscape', Sam Harris argues the existence of a morality that is objective and scientifically true based on a series of hard-wired tendencies in the human brain. Excuse me, but ... all that means is that this morality has been evolutionarily beneficial."