Tom Wolfe

We live in an age in which ideas, important ideas, are worn like articles of fashion — and for precisely the same reason articles of fashion are worn, which is to make the wearer look better and to feel a la mode.

An intellectual is a person knowledgeable in one field who speaks out only in others. It required no intellectual effort whatsoever. Suddenly he was elevated to a plane from which he could look down upon ordinary people.

You are graduates of one of the two or three greatest universities in America. You have been raised in a tradition of straight thinking and straight talking.