# Quote — Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

> The professional man lives off ideas, not for them. … He has acquired a stock of mental skills that are for sale. The skills are highly developed, but we do not think of him as being an intellectual if certain qualities are missing from his work—disinterested intelligence, generalizing power, free speculation, fresh observation, creative novelty, radical criticism. At home he may happen to be an intellectual, but at his job he is a hired mental technician who uses his mind for the pursuit of externally determined ends. It is this element—the fact that ends are set from some interest or vantage point outside the intellectual process itself—which characterizes both the zealot, who lives obsessively for a single idea, and the mental technician, whose mind is used not for free speculation but for a salable end. The goal here is external and not self-determined, whereas the intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas—qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety.

- Author: [Richard Hofstadter](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter.md)
- Book: [Anti-Intellectualism in American Life](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter/anti-intellectualism-in-american-life.md)
- Page: 27
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter#Anti-Intellectualism_in_American_Life_(1963)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter/anti-intellectualism-in-american-life/the-professional-man

## More from this book

> It is the historic glory of the intellectual class of the West in modern times that, of all the classes which could be called in any sense privileged, it has shown the largest and most consistent concern for the well-being of the classes which lie below it in the social scale.

p. 29 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter/anti-intellectualism-in-american-life/it-is-the.md)

> Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

p. 30 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter/anti-intellectualism-in-american-life/whatever-the-intellectual.md)

> As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

p. 30 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/richard-hofstadter/anti-intellectualism-in-american-life/as-with-the.md)