Intellect Is Resented As A Form Of

The Idea Of The Paranoid Style As A Force In Politics Would Have Little Contemporary Relevance Or Historical Value If It Were Applied Only To Men With Profoundly Disturbed Minds. It Is The Use Of Paranoid Modes Of Expression By More Or Less Normal People That Makes The Phenomenon Significant.

It Is Ironic That The United States Should Have Been Founded By Intellectuals, For Throughout Most Of Our Political History, The Intellectual Has Been For The Most Part Either An Outsider, A Servant Or A Scapegoat.

There Has Always Been In Our National Experience A Type Of Mind Which Elevates Hatred To A Kind Of Creed; For This Mind, Group Hatreds Take A Place In Politics Similar To The Class Struggle In Some Other Modern Societies.

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.

To The Zealot Overcome By His Piety And To The Journeyman Of Ideas Concerned Only With His Marketable Mental Skills, The Beginning And End Of Ideas Lies In Their Efficacy With Respect To Some Goal External To Intellectual Processes.