“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

― Isaac Asimov

“Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything. ”
~Jane Austen

“In 1980, scientist and writer Isaac Asimov argued in an essay that “there is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been.”

That year, the Republican Party stood at the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, which initiated a decades-long conservative groundswell …

It’s a familiar contention. There have been critiques of American anti-intellectualism since the country’s founding, though whether or not that phenomenon has intensified (as Susan Jacoby alleged in The Age of American Unreason) may be a subject of debate.

Not all of the unreason is partisan. But “the strain of anti-intellectualism” writes Asimov, “has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”

“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.”

― Mark Twain

― Jane Austen

“A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”

“The highest result of education is tolerance.”

~Helen Keller

“You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.”

~Josephine Baker

“Education is all a matter of building bridges.”

~Ralph Ellison

An actress can only play a woman. I’m an actor, I can play anything.