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He's not an intellectual. Intellectuals start all the trouble in the world.

— Peggy Noonan

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Intelligence

More quotes by Peggy Noonan

Candor is a compliment; it implies equality. It's how true friends talk.

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. John Kennedy had wit, and so did Lincoln, who also had abundant humor; Reagan was mostly humor.

Donald Trump’s hold on history loosened, and may be breaking.

He hasn’t been equal to the multiple crises. Good news or bad, he rarely makes any situation better. And everyone kind of knows.

I would think to myself [...] that the battle for the mind of Ronald Reagan was like the trench warfare of World War I: Never have so many fought so hard for such barren terrain.

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