"I shall always be grateful to one of my critics, who, in a book review, perplexed me by his remark that I was "anti-intellectual." I wrote him to find out what, precisely, made him level this charge. He replied by pointing out that I explicitly took issue with the governing ideas of today’s intelligentsia… For my critic, the very fact that I had set myself against the intelligentsia made me anti-intellectual in "a straightforward sense." May I confess that his answer thrilled me? I knew I had heard something important, something I would think about for a long time. I had always thought of an intellectual as someone who thinks for himself or herself, who explores ideas wherever they might lead, and who, above all… is suspicious of the argument from authority, especially group authority."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Gary Saul Morson, What Is the Intelligentsia? Once More, an Old Russian Question (Fall 1993)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism
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Anti-intellectualism
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