Henry Ford Quotes
There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.
Ford, Henry. My Philosophy of Industry. Coward-McCann, 1929, p. 23.
There has always been in America a subpopulation which has distrusted intellectuals and educated people. The bias against intellectuals and well educated people ebbs and flows but it is always present. In this 1920 quotation the suspicion was there as today but did not have the name calling that tended to accompany this bias in the latter part of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st. Some of the bias is in reaction to a snobbishness that has been exhibited by some intellectuals, but the bias against intellectuals is generally strongest amongst the least educated groups in America. The South in particular has tended to have the weakest educational systems and institutions, and the vast majority of intellectuals were against the Southern racism and discrimination that used to prevail so extensively, and the vestige of anti intellectualism is still there despite the fact that the gap between Southern education and institutions is nowhere near as large as it used to be. Religious fundamentalists also are generally more distrustful of intellectuals as even where the intellectuals are religious they tend to be modernists and not fundamentalists. And of course, liberal and conservative intellectuals constantly accuse the other group of dominating the intellectual agenda.
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, business magnate, anti-Semite, and founder of the Ford Motor Company and chief developer of the assembly line technique of mass production. By creating the first automobile that middle-class Americans could afford, he converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into an accessible conveyance that profoundly impacted the landscape of the 20th century.
