Intellectual Snobbery Quotes

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.

an intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority.

Mama was always saying I was a brain snob, that I didn't like people who didn't think. I didn't know if that was snobby. Who wanted to walk around explaining everything to people all the time?

The Bostonians take their learning too sadly: culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their "Hub," as they call it, is the paradise of prigs.

Oh, there's so much ego with men; in their head, they can't possibly think about Tesco's when they are doing Othello. Er, why not? They want to think that they are such geniuses they can't muddy their day with domesticity, and I've got no truck with it whatsoever.

Throughout my college years, I'd watch my sister squeal every Christmas as she unwrapped another 'Buffy' DVD set. I didn't know much about the series, but I was filled with that obnoxious self-importance that comes from having decided to be an Academic Who Reads Serious Things.

There's no doubt in my mind that people on the West Coast - L.A. particularly - and the East Coast have no clue at all about what's happening outside their own little bailiwick. And they think everybody is stupid because they are not sophisticated.

There is an intellectual snobbery that, regrettably, many academics suffer from. They are proud their paper is only read by a small group of people - makes it very exclusive. Let's get rid of that. If it's truly important, people should be excited about it.

The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don't have PhDs.

I will not descend among professors and capitalists.

… when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don’t happen to know it.

Academic Marxists, with their elitist sense of superiority to popular taste, are the biggest snobs in America.

Men who have flattered themselves into this opinion of their own abilities, look down on all who waste their lives over books, as a race of inferior beings condemned by nature to perpetual pupilage, and fruitlessly endeavouring to remedy their barrenness by incessant cultivation, or succour their feebleness by subsidiary strength. They presume that none would be more industrious than they, if they were not more sensible of deficiences; and readily conclude, that he who places no confidence in his own powers owes his modesty only to his weakness.

It's absolutely philistine not to recognize what a great book 'An American Dream' is. Norman Mailer is his own worst enemy, and if you don't catch him in a defensive position, he'll admit it. I'd really like to help that man.

Pride is a mental factor causing us to feel higher or superior to others. Even our study of dharma can be the occasion for the delusion of pride to arise if we think our understanding is superior to that of everyone else. Pride is harmful because it prevents us from accepting fresh knowledge from a qualified teacher. Just as a pool of water cannot collect on the tip of a mountain, so too a reservoir of understanding cannot be established in a mind falsely elevated by pride.

Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.

Calling something "new age" is one of the media's biggest canons. If you're called "new age," you couldn't possibly be serious, you couldn't possibly have anything deep to say, and you probably hang out in California too much - and we know that no one in California reads books or has any serious thoughts!

Most people are not intellectuals — a fact that intellectuals have terrible trouble coming to terms with.

Snobbery is not merely a silly human weakness but something basic in the mentality of modern man-a symptom which reflects the general sickness, the dislocation of social and cultural values in contemporary civilization.

Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

Pedants, who have the least knowledge to be proud of, are impelled most by vanity.

I suppose I've always carried what is regarded as a bit of unnecessary baggage in Britain. I've always carried the charge that I am an intellectual in politics.

I'm responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

There are many non-intellectual countries; Australia is one of the few anti-intellectual ones.