Quote of the day

From a Paul Johnson interview:

"...What is an intellectual? An intellectual is somebody who thinks ideas are more important than people."

heh. Even more funny if you read his book that points out how some intellectuals treated those around them.

True, it's a bit one sided, but a lot of these things are ignored in history books. Yet some of the revealations are shocking, such as the fact that Rousseau forced his mistress to give up her children. True, even Mary Ann Glendon noted that his mistress wasn't the dumb passive person his defenders make her out to be, and probably arranged with her mother to have the kids cared for by extended families rather than abandon them to orphanages with a high mortality. Yet the point is that Rousseau didn't care if the kids lived or died.