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An intellectual may be defined as a man who speaks with general authority about a subject on which he has no particular competence.

— Irving Kristol

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Intelligence

More quotes by Irving Kristol

The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (1995)

If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.

What rules the world is idea, because ideas define the way reality is perceived.

I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.

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Each of these private teachers who work for pay ... inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom.

Socrates

Most intellectual people do not believe in God, but they fear him just the same.

Wilhelm Reich Philosophy : An Introduction to the Art of Wondering (2005)

Innocence in genius, and candor in power, are both noble qualities.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël De l’Allemagne [Germany (1813)

Like every 'intellectual', a philosophy teacher is a petty bourgeois. When he opens his mouth, it is petty-bourgeois ideology that speaks: its resources and ruses are infinite.

Louis Althusser Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Irving Kristol (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.