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Juicy Quotes on Intellectuals and self-styled World Improvers
“My favourite definition of 'Intellectual' is: 'A person whose education surpasses their intelligence.'”
–Arthur C. Clarke
“The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.”
― David Harsanyi
“Intellect, you see, is not the same as spirituality. While spirituality makes you humble, intellect without sensitivity just makes you snobbish and egoistic.”
―Abhaidev, The World's Most Frustrated Man
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
―G.K. Chesterton
“What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy?”
―Daniel J. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas
“If an engineer makes a mistake, for example, and their building collapses killing hundreds, they are ruined. In the same vain, if someone who’s only profession is being an intellectual makes a mistake and millions die there is virtually no accountability.”
-Thomas Sowell
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
-George Orwell
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-H. L. Mencken
“There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.”
―Theodore Dalrymple
“Intellectuals are a pretty unique species all by themselves, given to advocating things out of sheer brazenness that they could not themselves stomach if they were ushered in to witness the scene.”
―Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
“Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most leftwing segment.....The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.”
―Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
“I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.”
―Leonid Borodin, Partings
“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.”
―Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit
“I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers.
I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals.”
―Mary Rose O'Reilley
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
― H.L. Mencken
“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
―G.K. Chesterton
–Arthur C. Clarke
“The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.”
― David Harsanyi
“Intellect, you see, is not the same as spirituality. While spirituality makes you humble, intellect without sensitivity just makes you snobbish and egoistic.”
―Abhaidev, The World's Most Frustrated Man
“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
―G.K. Chesterton
“What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy?”
―Daniel J. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas
“If an engineer makes a mistake, for example, and their building collapses killing hundreds, they are ruined. In the same vain, if someone who’s only profession is being an intellectual makes a mistake and millions die there is virtually no accountability.”
-Thomas Sowell
“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
-George Orwell
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-H. L. Mencken
“There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.”
―Theodore Dalrymple
“Intellectuals are a pretty unique species all by themselves, given to advocating things out of sheer brazenness that they could not themselves stomach if they were ushered in to witness the scene.”
―Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy
“Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most leftwing segment.....The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.”
―Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
“I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.”
―Leonid Borodin, Partings
“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.”
―Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit
“I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers.
I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals.”
―Mary Rose O'Reilley
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
― H.L. Mencken
“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
―G.K. Chesterton
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Glass Bead Game, though, was Hesse's last novel, written when he was an older man, and when he was deciding that maybe writing novels wasn't what he was about anymore (for the next 20 years, he only wrote poems, short stories, essays, and responses to letters). That perspective has been an interesting one to me at this point in my journey.
Also, I can recognize some of the themes of Spengler in the sketch of future history that is the backdrop to the story, so it makes a good complement to my other longer-than-it-should-be-taking reading project of The Decline of the West. I guess I'm going to have to take a break from ze Germans if I want a faster read!
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As I mentioned, I am reading the two literally concurrently, so I may be primed to see Spengler where he may not truly be lurking, but the fact that Hesse was a German of the generation for whom Spengler would have been the talk of the town, along with a handful of specific breadcrumbs and some broader themes makes me think it's safe to say that Spengler was an influence on the work, though not the influence. Instead, I get the sense that Hesse thought that Spengler had a great deal of insight and spotted many important trends, but took them to overly exact conclusions and discounted too much the possibilities of human striving to soften or ennoble the trends outlined in The Decline of the West.
On a more pragmatic note, JMG's pocket reviews of all of Hesse's novels were helpful to me and directly led to my reading Glass Bead Game and gave me some thoughts about it going into reading it. If you haven't read it already, that post might give you some more guidance on whether/where to dive into Hesse's works.
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As the old tale goes, Hubris so often results in Nemesis making an eventual appearance.