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No people has ever despised and distrusted the intellect and intellectuals more than the British.

— Leonard Woolf

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Intelligence

More quotes by Leonard Woolf

Nothing matters, and everything matters.

Anyone can be a barbarian; it requires a terrible effort to be or remain a civilized man.

Barbarians Within and Without (1939)

There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than to their class privileges and vested interests except perhaps to their illusions.

There is always some contempt in pity. One pities poor old Oedipus, but one doesn't pity Job.

The Wise Virgins (1914)

In the timbre of a woman's voice, when it is beautiful, there seem to be mysteriously harmonised all the desires and enchantments both of the spirit and the body.

The Wise Virgins (1914)

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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: Leonard Woolf (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.