Who are the Intellectuals? (Part 2)

Who are the Intellectuals?

"Any man or woman who is willing to think. All those who know that man's life must be guided by reason, those who value their own life and are not willing to surrender it to the cult of despair in the modern jungle of cynical impotence, just as they are not willing to surrender the world to the Dark Ages and the rule of the brutes."

--- Ayn Rand in her book: For The New Intellectual

Who are the Intellectuals? (Part 1)

"The tragic joke of human history is that on any of the altars men erected, it was always man whom they immolated and the animal whom they enshrined.

It was always the animal's attributes, not man's, that humanity worshipped: the idols of instinct and the idol of force - the mystics and the kings - the mystics, who longed for an irresponsible consciousness and ruled by means of the claim that their dark emotions were superior to reason, that knowledge came in blind, causeless fits, blindly to be followed, not doubted - and the kings - who ruled by means of claws and muscles, with conquest as their method and looting as their aim, with a club or a gun as sole sanction of their power.

The defender of man's soul were concerned with his feelings, and the defender of man's body were concerned with his stomach - but both were united against his mind."

--- John Galt in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand