(The intelligensia.) For various reasons this shadowy caste is largely made up of men who have official stamps upon their learning – that is, of professors, of doctors of philosophy; outside of academic circles it tends to shade off very rapidly into a half-world of isolated anarchists. One of those reasons is plain enough: the […]
Intellectual Quotes
A man may walk intellectually among the stars and grovel morally among the swine.
One thing that Hitler and his frineds have demonstrated is what a relatively good time the intellectual has had during the past hundred years. After all, how does the persecution of Joyce, Lawrence, Whitman, Baudelaire, even Oscar Wilde, compare with the kind of thing that has been happening to Liberal intellectuals all over Europe since […]
At a ceertain age, people’s minds close up. They live on their intellectual fat.
Intellects whose desires have outstripped their understanding.
It’s the understanding of this intellectual idea that’s fundamental. John looks at the motorcycle and he sees steel in various shapes and has negative feelings about these steel shapes and turns off the whole thing. I look at the shapes of the steel now and I see ideas. He thinks I’m working on parts. I’m […]
A touchstone to determine the actual worth of an “intellectual”, find out how he feels about astrology.
Like many intellectuals, he was incapable of saying a simple thing in a simple way.
A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.
American politics are deeply contradictory of course, but anti-intellectualism is the common strain. This includes a deep suspicion of anything that isn’t simple, fundamental, traditional, down-to-earth and “American” in the ideological sense, and can be exploited easily by demagogues and cynical politicians of the right.
