“The intellectual … may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.”

—  Richard Hofstadter

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 29

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Richard Hofstadter photo
Richard Hofstadter34
American historian 1916–1970

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