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 made this remark in the early 1980s in an essay lamenting what he saw as a long-standing strain of American anti-intellectualism. Writing as a prominent science popularizer and public intellectual, Asimov argued that mass media, political rhetoric, and a misconstrued idea of egalitarianism were fostering suspicion toward expertise and learning. The line appears in his essay “A Cult of Ignorance,” composed amid contemporary debates over education, scientific literacy, and the public standing of experts, and it reflects Asimov’s broader concern that democratic culture can be distorted into hostility toward knowledge rather than widened access to it.

Asimov distinguishes democratic equality of rights from an alleged equality of opinions regardless of evidence. The “false notion” he targets is the idea that democracy requires treating ignorance and knowledge as interchangeable, which in practice devalues education, expertise, and careful reasoning. By calling anti-intellectualism a “constant thread,” he suggests it is not a temporary mood but a recurring cultural habit that can be politically useful—flattering resentment and simplifying complex issues. The quote’s force lies in its warning: when public life rewards confident unknowingness, societies become more vulnerable to demagoguery, misinformation, and policy made without regard to facts.