“In a neurotic society, insane ideas can become 'normal', the current triumph of tribalism is the result of rabid global anti-intellectualism.” — Martinus Hendrikus Benders Copy Share Image
“Smart shaming affects society at large by advertising mediocrity, villainizing the intelligent, and idolizing the foolish.” — E. Ravago Copy Share Image
“She feared long words she did not understand. Beelzebub lay hid among too many syllables.” — Algernon Blackwood Copy Share Image
“Where men are heated by zeal and enthusiasm, there is no degree of human testimony so strong as may not be procured… — David Hume Copy Share Image
“Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrongheaded pseudointellectualism is far worse.” — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“Hitler kept the truth from his servile masses. Instead of intellectual persuasion he gave them emotional suggestion.” — Marc Bloch Copy Share Image
“It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to… — Tom Nichols Copy Share Image
“As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it… — Herbert Spencer Copy Share Image
“No, the bigger problem is that we’re proud of not knowing things. Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything… — Thomas M. Nichols Copy Share Image
“Let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations have not been boasters… — Ralph Waldo Emerson Copy Share Image
“There is a great superficiality in today's evangelical world. Many Bible-believing Christians share the contemporary case for self-gratification, emotionalism, and anti-intellectualism. Many… — Gene Edward Veith Jr Copy Share Image
“Either you think about things and try to understand them or you reach for relatively empty soundbites and slogans which excuse you… — James O'Brien Copy Share Image
“I do not think he (Chester Arthur) knows anything. He can quote a verse from poetry or a page from Dickens or… — Harriet Blaine Copy Share Image
“What they produce is not culture but a population allergic to logic, addicted to drama, and proud of their own mental stagnation.… — E. Ravago Copy Share Image
“Mindfulness opposes judgment, conceptualization, words, language, reason, logic, knowledge, understanding, science, philosophy, mathematics, history, intellectualism, learning from the past and planning for… — Thomas Stark Copy Share Image
“In the life of many churches, the habits of anti-intellectualism are planted early. Children are encouraged to open themselves up to the… — Jon Ward Copy Share Image
“You could take seriously a president that quoted T. S. Eliot. But none do, and none ever would. No president would ever… — David Sinclair Copy Share Image
“Sonnet 1106 When an expert doesn't know something, They say, "I don't know", without tricks. But an armchair intellectual knows it all,… — Abhijit Naskar Copy Share Image
“Parents and schools are teaching children how not to think, but how to be good little groupthinkers and people of faith, how… — David Sinclair Copy Share Image
“The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In… — Dietrich Bonhoeffer Copy Share Image
“To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that intellect is really… — Richard Hofstadter Copy Share Image
“The specific use of folks as an exclusionary and inclusionary signal, designed to make the speaker sound like one of the boys… — Susan Jacoby Copy Share Image
“Drilling without thinking has of course been Republican party policy since May 2008. With gas prices soaring to unprecedented heights, that's when… — Naomi Klein Copy Share Image
“I love your body 'cause I've lost my mind If you want someone to talk to, you're wasting your time If you… — Jarvis Cocker Copy Share Image
“The temporary alliance between the elite and the mob rested largely on this genuine delight with which the former watched the latter… — Hannah Arendt Copy Share Image
“And I wonder, therefore, how James Atlas can have been so indulgent in his recent essay ‘The Changing World of New York… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“The cosmos stands amazed at just how dumb Planet Dumb is. With an uncanny talent for error, humanity has at every crossroads… — Ranty McRanterson Copy Share Image
“Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind… — Stendhal Copy Share Image
“The great rationalist Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” The religious mystic the Buddha said, “I think, therefore I am not.”… — Thomas Stark Copy Share Image
“...the danger that American society as a whole will over-esteem intellect or assign it such a transcendent value as to displace other… — Richard Hofstadter Copy Share Image
“Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. "Critical thinking" may be a ubiquitous educational slogan—a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
“There is no danger greater for the State than that of self-styled intellectuals. You would have been better off remaining illiterate. -… — Marilyn Hacker Copy Share Image
“Listen, I’m not an intellectual—Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our… — Philip K. Dick Copy Share Image
“Mindfulness” is the purest mindlessness. It is the great and perverse desire to annihilate consciousness and exist in an eternal now of… — Jack Tanner Copy Share Image
“The tragedy is that thinking men, so-called intellectuals, seem to threaten the electorate. We have in this country an anti-intellectual strain that… — Myrna Loy Copy Share Image
“Therefore,' said Loki the mockery, to the snake his daughter, 'we need to know everything, or at least as much as we… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his… — Walter M. Miller Jr Copy Share Image
“After the First World War, the man in charge of recruitment at the Colonial Office was Major Ralph Dolignon Furse, a decorated… — Sathnam Sanghera Copy Share Image
“Reason and logic are a force for unity. People can rally around the objective, absolute Truth. All of these are undermined by… — Joe Dixon Copy Share Image
