Public Intellectual Quotes

The formula for the new public intellectual seemed simple enough: (1) develop a critical lens and then hold it up to whatever young people are interested in; (2) say something outlandish, seemingly at random; (3) through sophistry arrive at the radical conclusion you blurted out at the argument's outset. ~ Will Chancellor

I see myself as, first and above all, a teacher of history; next, a writer of European history; next, a commentator on European affairs; next, a public intellectual voice within the American left; and only then an occasional, opportunistic participant in the pained American discussion of the Jewish matter. ~ Tony Judt

I am not indifferent to the appreciation of kind people. [The voters were] extremely kind in naming me the world's top public intellectual, a title to which I can never see myself as entitled. ~ Fethullah Gulen

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative. ~ Susie Orbach

Tad Homer-Dixon is a rare kind of public intellectual, who combines real expertise with a commitment to communicate to the widest possible readership. In The Ingenuity Gap he wants us all to wake-up to the fearful possibility that our blithe trust in science and technology may be misplaced. Human ingenuity may not be capable of coping with two emerging crises of this century and the next: population growth and environmental despoliation. Read Homer Dixon's wake-up call and you will see the future very differently. ~ Michael Ignatieff

I am sometimes asked about the concept or definition of a 'public intellectual,' and though I find the whole idea faintly silly, I believe it should ideally mean that the person so identified is self-sustaining and autonomously financed. Susan was pre-eminently one such. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The onslaught of new and complex information, the academic and thinktank cults of expertise, not to mention the impossibility of bohemia in the age of high rents, have conspired to assassinate the public intellectual. ~ Pankaj Mishra

I won a Marshall scholarship to read philosophy at Oxford, and what I most wanted to do was strengthen public intellectual culture - I'd write books and essays to help us figure out who we wanted to be. ~ Reid Hoffman

[The public intellectual] will also describe how she can work a pop culture reference into her essay, comparing the Supreme Court to the creature in the number-one box office movie of the moment. Editors like this sort of mass-media integration, first, because it gives them a way to illustrate the piece, and second because they are under the delusion that pop-culture references will propel a piece's readership into the five-digit area. ~ David Brooks

I'm not one of the people who has a kind of scholarly hat and writes in a certain way for an academic audience and then puts on a public intellectual hat and writes a different way for a different kind of readership. I generally write the way I write, no matter what and it seems to have worked for me. ~ Louis Menand

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. ~ George Washington

This place might have been paradise, a treasure trove far greater than any to be found in a pirate yarn.
Everywhere he looked there were books.
They rose into the air in majestic columns, stacks and stacks of them forming a maze that seemed to stretch to forever; the stacks rose high into the air and disappeared towards the unseen ceiling. The air had the overwhelming smell of old books, of polished leather, and yellowing leaves, like the smell of a bookshop or a public library magnified a thousand-fold. ~ Lavie Tidhar

Robin Williams was the kind of generous person who would do things but not want to receive public credit for it. ~ Jessica Chastain

Chamfort, echoing the misanthropic attitude of generations of philosophers before and after him, put the matter simply: 'Public opinion is the worst of all opinions. ~ Alain De Botton

Naturally, therefore, these people talk about 'a happy time coming'; 'the paradise of the future'; 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue', and so on. And so also the men of the inner circle speak - the sacred priesthood. They also speak to applauding crowds of the happiness of the future, and of mankind freed at last. But in their mouths" - and the policeman lowered his voice - "in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves. That is why they throw bombs instead of firing pistols. The innocent rank and file are disappointed because the bomb has not killed the king; but the high-priesthood are happy because it has killed somebody. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Everything that we believe in and count on is really in question right now. Our safety net, public education, housing, health care, so many things that are fundamental to a healthy democracy, are under attack. So I think, in general we've got a lot of work to do. ~ Ai-jen Poo

Action is the activity of the rational soul, which abhors irrationality and must combat it or be corrupted by it. When it sees the irrationality of others, it must seek to correct it, and can do this either by teaching or engaging in public affairs itself, correcting through its practice. And the purpose of action is to enable philosophy to continue, for if men are reduced to the material alone, they become no more than beasts. ~ Iain Pears

Whatever actually happened or was said, McChystal's refusal to defend himself - to give me any ammunition to use on his behalf - made it impossible for me to save his job. But to this day, I believe he was given the bum's rush by Biden, White House staff, and NSS who harbored deep resentment toward his unyielding advocacy the previous fall of counterinsurgency and a huge troop surge in Afghanistan; who interpreted his public comments back than as "boxing in" the president; and who continued to oppose the strategy approved by the president and the way McChrystal was implementing it. I am convinced the "Rolling Stone" article gave the president, egged on by those around him in the White House, and himself distrustful of the senior military, and opportunity he welcomed to demonstrate vividly - to the public and to the Pentagon - that he was commander in chief and fully in control of the military. ~ Robert M. Gates

Plot these days is anti-intellectual and verboten, the mark of the Philistine, the huckster with a pen. There mustn't be too much story and that should be fog-bound and shrouded in heavy symbolism, including the phallic, like a sort of covoluted charade. Symbolism now carries the day, it's the one true ladder of literary heaven. ~ Robert Traver

The rascal multitude are the proper targets of the mass media and a public education system geared to obedience and training in needed skills, including the skill of repeating patriotic slogans on timely occasions. ~ Noam Chomsky

In court, jurors are admonished by the judge at every recess not to discuss the case or form any opinions until the case is given to them for deliberations. Of course, there is no such limitation on the public. ~ Robert Shapiro

The initial months of the war had left Barcelona plunged in a strange somnolence of fear and internal skirmishes. The fascist Rebellion had failed in Barcelona in the first few days after the coup, and there were those who wanted to believe that the war was now a distant event, that in the end it would be seen as just one more piece of bravado from generals with little stature and even less shame. In a matter of weeks, they said, everything would return to the feverish abnormality that characterize the countries public life . . . He knew that a civil war is never just one fight, but a tangle of large or small fights bound to one another. It's official memory is always established by chroniclers and trench on the winning or the losing side, but it is never the story of those who are trapped between the two, those who seldom set the bonfire alight...[He] used to say that in Spain and opponent may be scorned, but anyone who does things his own way and refuses to swallow what he doesn't agree with is hated. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Bible doesn't explain everything necessary for our intellectual satisfaction, but it explains everything necessary for our obediance. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. ~ Rudolf Rocker

To be sure, it is not the fruits of scientific research that elevate a man and enrich his nature, but the urge to understand, the intellectual work, creative or receptive. ~ Albert Einstein

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I don't often get angered by the things press spokespeople say. Most of these people have difficult jobs and are often forced to be the public faces of policies they had nothing to do with creating. ~ Matt Taibbi

Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police. ~ Michael Crichton

It was in the 1960s that I began the detailed study of public regulation. ~ George Stigler

To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government. ~ Mark Levin

…the life which we, at any rate, can best lead to the glory of God at present is the learned life. By leading that life to the glory of God I do not, of course, mean any attempt to make our intellectual inquiries work out to edifying conclusions…I mean the pursuit of knowledge and beauty, in a sense, for their own sake, but in a sense which does not exclude their being for God's sake. An appetite for these things exists in the human mind, and God makes no appetite in vain. We can therefore pursue knowledge as such, and beauty as such, in the sure confidence that by so doing we are either advancing to the vision of God ourselves or indirectly helping others to do so. Humility, no less than the appetite, encourages us to concentrate simply on the knowledge or the beauty, not too much concerning ourselves with their ultimate relevance to the vision of God. That relevance may not be intended for us but for our betters - for men who come after and find the spiritual significance of what we dug out in blind and humble obedience to our vocation. ~ C.S. Lewis

Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don't sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! "Intellectual courage"? True "intellectual courage" is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it? ~ David Mitchell

Somehow in the middle of the L.A. trendiness, Boston conservation, New York chic and San Francisco intellectual mellow, there's a place where everything meets. ~ Frederick Lenz

As good heirs of the Bible, we think that a great misfortune necessarily follows a great infraction. In this respect the intellectual caste, in our world, is the penitential class par excellence, continuing the role of the clergy under the Old Regime. We have to call its members what they are: officials of original sin. ~ Pascal Bruckner

It's an absurd request. Our minds, unedited by guilt or shame, are selfish and unkind, and the majority of our thoughts, at any given time, are not for public consumption, because they would either be hurtful or else just make us look like the selfish and unkind bastards we are. ~ Jonathan Tropper

Better to work for yourself alone. You do as you like and follow your own ideas, you admire yourself and please yourself: isn't that the main thing? And then the public is so stupid. Besides, who reads? And what do they read? And what do they admire? ~ Gustave Flaubert

A conspiracy is nothing but a secret agreement of a number of men for the pursuance of policies which they dare not admit in public ~ Mark Twain

This is the way the world is now. Everything is public. You have to find other people who understand. ~ Lauren Beukes

Its job was to arrange the painless deaths of handicapped people who could not survive without costly care. It had done splendid work in the last couple of years, disposing of tens of thousands of useless people. The problem was that German public opinion was not yet sophisticated enough to understand the need for such deaths, so the program had to be kept quiet. ~ Ken Follett

For such people, the ruling gods are progress, science, and development. They imagine that we know so much more about the world than those people of olden times, because "we" have science. Of course, they themselves do not have science, they have simply heard and believed that scientific knowledge is real knowledge. They know little about the goals and methods of science, and nothing about the Islamic Intellectual tradition. They are blind imitators in intellectual issues, that is, on the level where they should be striving for their own understanding. What is worse, this is a selective imitation, since they only accept the authority of the "scientists" and the "experts", not that of the great Muslim thinkers of the past. If Einstein said it, it must be true, but if Al-Ghazali or Mulla Sadra said it, then it can't be true, because it isn't scientific. ~ William C. Chittick

I can think of no habit, kept up through the years, that binds a married couple more than that of reading good books together. Domestic problems and personal problems are for the time forgotten, and an intellectual intimacy is established that can be maintained in few other ways. ~ Alice Hegan Rice

We like to think of this as the conquest of bestial weaknesses by the powers of intellectual altruism, as if ethics and morality were some kind of modern invention. If this were really true, it is doubtful if we would be here today to proclaim it. If we did not carry in us the basic biological urge to co-operate with our fellow men, we would never have survived as a species. ~ Desmond Morris

Politics is a dirty business, a ruse, an ideological cul-de-sac, a vast looter of intellectual and financial resources, a lie that corrupts, a deceiver, a means of unleashing vast evil in the world of the most unexpected and undetected sort and the greatest diverter of human productivity ever concocted by those who do not believe in authentic social and economic progress. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

The loan crisis and the increasing slashing of funds for students, coupled with the astronomical rise in tuition, represent an unparalleled attack on the social state. The hidden agenda here is that when students graduate with such high debts, they rarely choose a career in public service; instead, they are forced to go into the corporate sector, and I see these conditions, in some ways, as being very calculated and as part of a larger political strategy to disempower students. ~ Henry Giroux

Thanks are due in three quarters. To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with ~ Charlotte Bronte

That's why I like you, he would say. You're unpredictable. You have no code. Really, Henry - and he would give a hearty guffaw - you're essentially treacherous. If we ever make a new world you'll have no place in it. You don't seem to understand what it means to give and take. You're an intellectual hobo ... At times I don't understand you at all. You're always gay and affable, almost sociable, and yet ... well, you have no loyalties. I try to be friends with you ... we were friends once, you remember ... but you've changed ... you're hard inside ... you're untouchable. God, you think I'm hard ... I'm just cocky, pugnacious, full of spirits. You're the one who's hard. You're a gangster, do you know that? He chuckled. Yes, Henry, that's what you are - you're a spiritual gangster. I don't trust you. ~ Henry Miller