Dependence on intellectual fashions

In many respects intellectuals have been heavily prejudiced and manifestly wrong. There is a contradiction between the role of intellectuals in the advance of civilization and the extent to which they have been mistaken and yielded to ideological fashions and prejudices. Intellectuals should be the object of particular suspicion when the seek to offer collective advice for, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, they tend to follow certain regular patters of behaviour. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. This what makes them dangerous for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.