To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants, it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?
— Johan Renck's Chernobyl (2019)
In so far as anti-intellectualism becomes articulate enough to be traced historically or widespread enough to make itself felt in contemporary controversy, it has to have spokesmen who are at least to some degree competent. These spokesmen are in the main neither the uneducated nor the unintellectual, but rather the marginal intellectuals, would-be intellectuals, unfrocked or embittered intellectuals, the literate leaders of the semi-literate, full of seriousness and high purpose about the causes that bring them to the attention of the world. I have found anti-intellectual leaders who were evangelical ministers, many of them highly intelligent and some even learned; fundamentalists, articulate about their theology; politicians, including some of the shrewdest; businessmen or other spokesmen of the practical demands of American culture; right-wing editors of strong intellectual pretensions and convictions; various marginal writers (vide the anti-intellectualism of the Beatniks); anti-Communist pundits, offended by the past heresies of a large segment of the intellectual community; and, for that matter, Communist leaders, who had much use for intellectuals when they could use them, but the utmost contempt for what intellectuals are concerned with.
— T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class
...a process shaped by political actors operating within specific contexts, pursuing political goals that involve popular mobilization around particular (religious) identity markers.
— Nader Hashemi & Danny Postel, Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East (2017)
A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up, and they think revolution is a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. I'm telling you that we're living in an infectious society right now. I'm telling you that we're living in a sick society right now. I'm telling you that we're living in a sick society and anybody that endorses integrating into a sick society before it's cleaned up is a man who's committing a crime against the people. If you walk past a hospital room and you see a sign that says contaminated, and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are mighty dumb. You understand me? Because if they weren't, they'd tell you that you were an unfair and unjust leader that does not have your follows interests in mind. What we're simply saying is that the leaders have to become more responsible and accountable for their actions. I'm saying that any program that's brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community.
— Fred Hampton, Former Deputy Chairman of the Black Panther Party
Autocrats dislike freedoms because they make it easy for people to learn of their shared misery and to collaborate with each other to rise up against the government. Given their druthers, autocrats eliminate freedom of assembly, a free press, and free speech whenever they can, thereby insulating themselves from the threat of the people. Unfortunately for autocrats, without the public goods benefits from these freedoms, people can find it hard towork effectively because they cannot easily exchange ideas even about how to improve the workplace. And if the people don’t work effectively, then the leader cannot collect tax revenues. Autocrats must find the right balance. Without enough freedom the people are less productive and do little work, but give them too many freedoms andthey pose a threat to the leader. The degree to which autocrats rely on taxation to fund the government limits the extent to which they can oppress the people.
— Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Alastair Smith, The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics