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"A bad man in this connection, is the lover of the common type, who loves the body rather than the mind. He is not constant: as soon as the bloom of the body fades, which is what attracted him, "he flies away and is gone," bringing disgrace on all he said and promised. But the man who loves goodness of character is constant throughout his life, since he has become united with something constant."

"On the contrary, they took the most obvious, glaring reality in a fantastically stupid way, and were already accustomed to worshiping success alone. Everything that was just, but humiliated and downtrodden, they laughed at disgracefully and hardheartedly. They regarded rank as intelligence; at the age of sixteen they were already talking about cushy billets...They were depraved to the point of monstrosity."

An incredible density of observations about the human psyche can be found in a mere 20 pages or so. The underground man points out that humans, while suffering from pain, also derive pleasure out of it. That we nurse our wounds and flaunt them at the same time. He lambasts utopianism, determinism and the idea that our purpose (if such a thing exists) would be rational. Clear to see how he influenced existentialism.

"How can a man of consciousness have the slightest respect for himself?"

"But all the same I am firmly convinced that not only too much consciousness but even any consciousness at all is a sickness. I stand on it."

Oh good I get to see the worst version of my inner monologue mirrored and amplified onto the page! Very clear this heavily influenced both Camus' "The Fall" and Sartre's Nausea.

Statement on "abnormal" children From the United States Office of Education (1950s) - "A considerable number of children...deviate sufficiently from mental, physical, and behavioral norms to require special educational provision. Among them are the blind, the deaf and the hard of hearing, the speech defective, the crippled, the delicate, the epileptic, the mentally deficient and the extraordinarily gifted."

Religion in the United States started with a schism that rejected leadership and diluted itself to convert others out of practicality. This practicality combined well with the early American businessman who saw himself as "self made" and not in need of a formal education which was viewed as lacking monetary or technical value. These two factors all but guaranteed most Americans would view art/intellect as useless.

Intellectuals were ousted from Presidential politics for nearly 70 years, and were sidelined altogether after the civil war (in part because of their support for abolition). Their only major victory? Civil service reform. Their revenge? Teddy Roosevelt.

"If we have to give up religion or education, we should give up education." - William Jennings Bryan (former presidential candidate of the early 20th century). The schism of the 1600s between Purtians who supported scholarship, vs evangelicals who snubbed their noses at any form of secular learning growing ever more militant, and dangerous by the time of the scopes monkey trial (of which Bryan prosecuted).

Hofstadter credits American anti-intellectualism in part to the watering down of religious teachings which resulted in the breakdown of social norms and cohesion. Now, fast forward 100s of years later to social media, which has diminished the power of the expert/authority/teacher/intellectual etc and has in part resulted in the breakdown of norms. History echos in the present but with entirely different catalysts.

Fascinating learning about the revivalist movement (in America) which undercut a more traditional, learned clergy that viewed rational thought as intrinsic to faith. This idea of feeling over thought in religion eventually resulted in today's evangelical Christians and their rejection of intellectual discourse,

"the intellectual life here has taken on a kind of primary moral signifigance. It is this aspect of the intellectual's feeling about ideas that i call his piety. The intellectual is engage - he is pledged, committed, enlisted. What everyone else is willing to admit, namely ideas and abstractions are of signal importance in human life, he imperatively feels"