Anti Intellectualism

Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy, and the dismissal of art, literature, and science as impractical and even contemptible human pursuits. Anti-intellectuals present themselves and are perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class detached from the concerns of most people, and feel that intellectuals dominate political discourse and control higher education.

Totalitarian government
...more

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
The Age of American Unreason
The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters
Ashes
Educated
Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure
The Assault on Reason
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
More Money Than Brains: Why Schools Suck, College is Crap, and Idiots Think They're Right
Hayek's Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right (Near Futures, 9)
Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter
The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W. Bush
Anti-Enlightenment Tradition
The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Philip Plait
I’m tired of ignorance held up as inspiration, where vicious anti-intellectualism is considered a positive trait, and where uninformed opinion is displayed as fact.
Phil Plait

More quotes...