38 Quotes About Anti-intellectualism

It is essential for the rulers’ rule not to be apparent, hence the elite’s ingenious use of “democracy” (dumbocracy), in which the sedated masses are led to believe that they choose how they are governed. Have the cattle ever gone more willingly to the abattoir?

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

Anti-intellectualism is one thing, but faith in wrongheaded pseudointellectualism is far worse.

Then along came social media, the worst thing of all, the Cretin Unbound. Any moron could shout down Prometheus. The confederacy of dunces could descend like a pack and mock Apollo and Pythagoras. Now I’m putting an end to this circus. The clowns have performed long enough. The joke’s not funny anymore.

If you are able to learn with reason at hand and warmth in heart then you'll start to see the foulness of the primitive fantasies, such as nationalism, fundamentalism, elitism, intellectualism, anti-intellectualism and so on.

The late author Philip K. Dick once said that America isn't intellectual, it's anti-intellectual. Initially, I thought that was a harsh statement. But when you see intelligent people routinely branded 'nerds" and hear about the endless school shootings in the United States, it's hard not to think he had a point.

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies.

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 people who believe in the Bible have never read it.

To put it most simply, the evangelical ethos is activistic, populist, pragmatic, and utilitarian. It allows little space for broader or deeper intellectual effort because it is dominated by the urgencies of the moment.