"To require of men, whose knowledge and training peculiarly qualify them to give light and leading to their fellow-citizens, that they shall abstain from active participation in public movements where interests are divided and strong feelings are evoked, is a policy of moral and intellectual mutilation, as degrading to those who are curtailed in their citizenship, as it is injurious to the public."
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the nature of reality, especially the nature of society and proposed solutions for its normative problems. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or as a mediator, the intellectual participates in politics, either to defend a concrete proposition or to denounce an injustice, usually by eithe
"Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual."
"Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurate"
"The intellectual craves a social order in which uncommon people perform uncommon tasks every day. He wants a society throbbing with dedication, reverence, and worship. He sees it as scandalous that the discoveries of science and the feats of heroes should have as their denouement the comfort and affluence of common folk. A social order run by and for the people is to him a mindless organism motivated by sheer physiologism."
"Ask a wise man to dinner and hell upset everyone by his gloomy silence or tiresome questions. Invite him to a dance and youll have a camel prancing about. Haul him off to a public entertainment and his face will be enough to spoil the peoples entertainment."
"Even in the most favourable periods for cultural development , Intellectuals tend to have uneasy relationship with the status quo."
"The creative role of an intellectual requires detachment from any particular idea or interest. Since the beginning of modernity, the authority of the intellectual has rested on the claim to be acting and speaking on behalf of society as a whole."