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My experience is that people who call themselves “The Intellectuals” understand theories, but they do not understand things. .. The truth is, I suspect, as I have already suggested, that “The Intellectuals” live too much in the past. They know books but they do not know men.

— Booker T. Washington The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (1911)

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Intelligence

More quotes by Booker T. Washington

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

Up From Slavery (1901)

Progress, progress is the law of nature; under God it shall be our eternal guiding star.

Men may make laws to hinder and fetter the ballot, but men cannot make laws that will bind or retard the growth of manhood.

My whole life has largely been one of surprises.

Up From Slavery (1901)

Character, not circumstances, makes the man.

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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)

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