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When The Male Organ Of A Man Stands Erect, Two Thirds Of His Intelect Go Away. And One Third Of His Religion.
-Zadie Smith
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When The Male Organ

Zadie Smith
...
When The Male Organ Of A Man Stands Erect, Two Thirds Of His Intelect Go Away. And One Third Of His Religion.

Understanding the Quote: "when the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of..."

This quote by Zadie Smith reflects deeply on the theme of men. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Men, Two, Going Away, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Zadie Smith interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is celebrated for insightful thoughts on men and two. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Men
Two
Going Away
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Writing
Ambition
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Fall
Mean
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Editing
Secret
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Views
Order
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Brother
Waiting
Feelings
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Girl
Nerd
Get Money
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Love
Simple
Years
Sometimes, One Wants To Have The Illusion That One Is Making Ones Own Life, Out Of Ones Own Resources.
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Sometimes
Illusion
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Writing
Pages
Matter
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Doe
Alternatives
Action
'a Reality Shaped Around Your Own Desires' - There Is Something Sociopathic In That Ambition.
Ambition
Reality
Desire
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Sublime
Balance
Half
She Did What Girls Generally Do When They Don't Feel The Part: She Dressed It Instead.
Girl
Feels
When The Male Organ Of A Man Stands Erect, Two Thirds Of His Intelect Go Away. And One Third Of His Religion.
Men
Two
Going Away
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Everyday
News
Everyday Life
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Squirrels
Doe
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Men
Mind
Example
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Bags
Easier
Hoover
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Believe
Heterosexuality
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Novelists
Insight
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Thinking
Years
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Weight Problems
Might
Academic
He Traced The Genealogy Of The Feeling.
Feelings
Genealogy
Because Immigrants Have Always Been Particularly Prone To Repetition - It's Something To Do With That Experience Of Moving From West To East Or East To West Or From Island To Island. Even When You Arrive, You're Still Going Back And Forth; Your Children Are Going Round And Round. There's No Proper Term For It - Original Sin Seems Too Harsh; Maybe Original Trauma Would Be Better.
Children
Moving
Islands
You Become A Different Writer When You Approach A Short Story. When Things Are Not Always Having To Represent Other Things, You Find Real Human Beings Begin To Cautiously Appear On Your Pages.
Real
Insightful
Different
Sometimes Allah Punishes And Sometimes Men Have To Do It, And It Is A Wise Man Who Knows If It's Allah's Turn Or His Own.
Wise
Men
Sometimes
Our Children Will Be Born Of Our Actions. Our Accidents Will Become Their Destinies. Oh, The Actions Will Remain. It Is A Simple Matter Of What You Will Do When The Chips Are Down, My Friend. When The Fat Lady Is Singing. When The Walls Are Falling In, And The Sky Is Dark, And The Ground Is Rumbling. In That Moment Our Actions Will Define Us. And It Makes No Difference Whether You Are Being Watched By Allah, Jesus, Buddah, Or Whether You Are Not. On Cold Days A Man Can See His Breath, On A Hot Day He Can't. On Both Occasions, The Man Breathes.
Jesus
Children
Wall
I'm Just Interested In Women's Friendships Generally. It Always Seems To Me, And This Is Just My Pet Theory, That Women Are Kind Of At The Sharp End Of Capitalism One Way Or Another. Mainly Because They Buy Everything. In A Practical Sense, Women Buy Most Things. They're Always Comparing - To Friends, To Famous People, To Other People. An Obsessive Act Of Comparison.
People
Pet
Way
150 Years Ago In [charles] Dickens's Time There Was At Least A Sense Of Craft. So Some Of The Things People Had Inside Of Them, They Had The Possibility Of Expressing In The Making Of Things - Even In A Daily Way With Their Clothes Or Their Food. People Made A Good Deal Of Both Themselves. Now Our Daily Lives Are Almost All Consumption. Craft Plays A Tiny Role.
Clothes
Years
Play
We Cannot Be All The Writers All The Time. We Can Only Be Who We Are. Which Leads Me To My Second Point: Writers Do Not Write What They Want, They Write What They Can.
Writing
Want
Who We Are
I Don't Keep Any Copies Of My Books In The House - They Go To My Mum's Flat. I Don't Like Them Around.
Book
House
Mum
Can't A Rapper Insist, Like Other Artists, On A Fictional Reality, In Which He Is Somehow Still On The Corner, Despite Occupying The Penthouse Suite?
Artist
Reality
Rapper
Jerome Said, It's Like, A Family Doesn't Work Anymore When Everyone In It Is More Miserable Than They Would Be If They Were Alone, You Know?
Would Be
Miserable
Said
The Choices A Writer Makes Within A Tradition - Preferring Milton To Moliere, Caring For Barth Over Barthelme - Constitute Some Of The Most Personal Information We Can Have About Him.
Caring
Artist
Choices
Make Sure The Lubricant Is Unscented. Don't Join Fashionable 'schools Of Thought.' Read Everything.
School
Fashionable
Tell The Truth Through Whichever Veil Comes To Hand - But Tell It. Resign Yourself To The Lifelong Sadness That Comes From Never ­being Satisfied.
Writing
Sadness
Hands
The Very Reason I Write Is So That I Might Not Sleepwalk Through My Entire Life.
Writing
Might
Reason
You Say You Want To Talk, But You Don't . You Stonewall Me.
Want
It's A Funny Thing About Rap, That When You Say 'i' Into The Microphone, It's Like A Public Confession. It's Very Strange.
Rap
Funny Things
Strange
Boys Are Just Boys After All, But Sometimes Girls Really Seem To Be The Turn Of A Pale Wrist, Or The Sudden Jut Of A Hip, Or A Clutch Of Very Dark Hair Falling Across A Freckled Forehead. I'm Not Saying That's What They Really Are. I'm Just Saying Sometimes It Seems That Way, And That Those Details (a Thigh Mole, A Full Face Flush, A Scar The Precise Shape And Size Of A Cashew Nut) Are So Many Hooks Waiting To Land You.
Girl
Fall
Dark
Any Woman Who Counts On Her Face Is A Fool.
Faces
Fool
Anyone Over The Age Of Thirty Catching A Bus Can Consider Himself A Failure.
Age
Thirty
Catching
I Was Brought Up With The Sense That I Was Absolutely No Different From My Brothers. I Went To College Thinking I Was Absolutely No Different From The Men In College. But That's Not True. I'm Fundamentally Different. The Problem Was Not Being Able To Understand Difference And Equality At The Same Time. It's Something That We Can't Seem To Comprehend. You Can't State Difference And Also State Equality. We Have To State Sameness To Understand Equality. It's A Mistake.
Brother
Mistake
College
... Don't Ever Underestimate People, Don't Ever Underestimate The Pleasure They Receive From Viewing Pain That Is Not Their Own... Pain By Itself Is Just Pain. But Pain + Distance Can = Entertainment, Voyeurism, Human Interest, Cinéma Vérité, A Good Belly Chuckle, A Sympathetic Smile, A Raised Eyebrow, Disguised Contempt.
Pain
Distance
Eyebrows
World Makers, Social Network Makers, Ask One Question First: 'how Can I Do It?'
World
Firsts
Social Network
Cambridge Was A Joy. Tediously. People Reading Books In A Posh Place. It Was My Fantasy. I Loved It. I Miss It Still.
Book
Reading
People
Don't Confuse Honours With Achievement.
Achievement
Honour
All Tastes Are Expressions Of Belief.
Expression
Taste
Belief
I Like Books That Don't Give You An Easy Ride. I Like The Feeling Of Discomfort. The Sense Of Being Implicated.
Book
Giving
Feelings
There's A Perception That Novels Can't Usually Allow For Your Kind Of Absolute Attention To Detail.
Perception
Details
Attention
The Library Was The Place I Went To Find Out What There Was To Know. It Was Absolutely Essential.
Library
Essentials
Knows
The Belief That Consciousness Extends Beyond Death Is Surely To Put More Belief In The Permanence Of Self, Not Less. That Seems To Me A Comfort That You're Allowing Yourself.
Self
Comfort
Belief
I Was Thinking About The Generation Before Us, Like John Barth And All Of Those Pomo Dudes Who Had That Idea Of, Instead Of Hiding The Structure And Making It Look Organic And Natural, We're Going To Put The Structure On The Outside. But Most Of The Time, At Least For Me, All I Could Attend To [in Swing Time] Was That Act Of Structural Self-consciousness.
Thinking
Swings
Self
Art Is The Western Myth, With Which We Both Console Ourselves And Make Ourselves.
Art
Myth
Western
Then He Gave Her A Kiss On The Forehead That Felt Like A Baptism And She Wept Like A Baby.
Baby
Kissing
Baptism
You Can Feel Bad... I Mean, That's Not Illegal.
Mean
Illegal
Feels
I Know A Lot Of People Who Read And Think: "george [saunders] Is So Much Fun." There's No Denying You're Fun To Read, But As A Writer I Think Of [george Saunders] As, In Fact, Not A Fun And Freewheeling Type But Really An Obsessive Control Artist.
Fun
Artist
Thinking
And So It Happened Again, The Daily Miracle Whereby Interiority Opens Out And Brings To Bloom The Million-petalled Flower Of Being Here, In The World, With Other People. Neither As Hard As She Had Thought It Might Be Nor As Easy As It Appeared.
Flower
People
Miracle
[george Saunders] Is Very Precise About What He Is Doing. There Isn't A Thing Left To Chance.
Chance
Left
Precise
The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Love Is That It Sets You Free.
Love
Lying
African American
I Love To Dance, And Sing - In The Shower, Not In Public. Im Too Old To Go Raving, But My Fondest Memories Are Of That Kind Of Thing - Dancing, With Lots Of People, Outside If Possible.
Memories
People
Dancing
For Me, George Saunders Novel [lincoln In The Bardo] Is About A Problem Of Pain.
Pain
Problem
Novel
Writing Is My Way Of Expressing - And Thereby Eliminating - All The Various Ways We Can Be Wrong-headed.
Writing
Way
Eliminating
When People Use That Stream Of Consciousness, It's Kind Of Just A Term They Use For Anything That Looks Slightly Different On The Page.
People
Different
Looks
(and Catholics Give Out Forgiveness At About The Same Rate As Politicians Give Out Promises And Whores Give Out)
Giving
Catholic
Promise
I Don't Ask Myself What Did I Live For, Said Carlene Strongly. That Is A Man's Question. I Ask Whom Did I Live For.
Men
Said
Asks
Most Of The Cruelty In The World Is Just Misplaced Energy.
Energy
World
Cruelty
It's Difficult To Tell The Truth About How A Book Begins. The Truth, As Far As It Can Be Presented To Other People, Is Either Wholly Banal Or Too Intimate.
Book
People
Telling The Truth
The Young People Have A Phrase For This Now, Which Is "slay In Your Lane." That's A Very Important Principle Of Writing. You Have To Work Out What It Is You Can't Do, Obscure It, And Focus On What Works.
Writing
People
Work Out
When I Write I Am Trying To Express My Way Of Being In The World. This Is Primarily A Process Of Elimination: Once You Have Removed All The Dead Language, The Second-hand Dogma, The Truths That Are Not Your Own But Other People's, The Mottos, The Slogans, The Out-and-out Lies Of Your Nation, The Myths Of Your Historical Moment - Once You Have Removed All That Warps Experience Into A Shape You Do Not Recognise And Do Not Believe In - What You Are Left With Is Something Approximating The Truth Of Your Own Conception.
Lying
Believe
Writing
The Idea That Motherhood Is Inherently Somehow A Threat To Creativity Is Just Absurd.
Creativity
Motherhood
Ideas
Desperation, Weakness, Vulnerability - These Things Will Always Be Exploited. You Need To Protect The Weak, Ring-fence Them, With Something Far Stronger Than Empathy.
Empathy
Stronger
Weakness
These Days, It Feels To Me Like You Make A Devil's Pact When You Walk Into This Country. You Hand Over Your Passport At The Check-in, You Get Stamped, You Want To Make A Little Money, Get Yourself Started... But You Mean To Go Back! Who Would Want To Stay? Cold, Wet, Miserable; Terrible Food, Dreadful Newspapers - Who Would Want To Stay? In A Place Where You Are Never Welcomed, Only Tolerated. Just Tolerated. Like You Are An Animal Finally House-trained.
Country
Mean
Animal
You're A Library Of Me.
Library
The Past Is Always Tense, The Future Perfect.
Future
Past
Perfect
This Is What Divorce Is: Taking Things You No Longer Want From People You No Longer Love.
Divorce
People
Want
If You're Going To Write A Good Book, You Have To Make Mistakes And You Have To Not Be So Cautious All The Time.
Mistake
Book
Writing
Tell The Truth Through Whichever Veil Comes To Hand - But Tell It.
Hands
Veils
Telling The Truth
To A Novelist, Fluidity Is The Ultimate Good Omen; Suddenly Difficult Problems Are Simply Solved, Intractable Structural Knots Loosen Themselves, And You Come Upon The Key Without Even Recognizing That This Is What You Hold.
Keys
Novelists
Fluidity
All Novels Attempt To Cut Neural Routes Through The Brain, To Convince Us That Down This Road The True Future Of The Novel Lies.
Lying
Cutting
Convince Us
Oh, I Know That. You Know Me, Baby, I Cannot Be Broken. Takes A Giant To Snap Me In Half.
Baby
Broken
Giants
...they Cannot Escape Their History Any More Than You Yourself Can Lose Your Shadow.
Shadow
White Teeth
Loses
Your Mid-thirties Is A Good Time Because You Know A Fair Amount, You Have Some Self-control.
Self
Good Times
Knows
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