Quote of the Day (Irving Howe, on Defending Freedom as the ‘Sacred Task of the Intellectual’)

“The obligation to defend and extend freedom in its simplest and most fundamental aspects is the sacred task of the intellectual, the one task he must not compromise even when his posture seems intractable, or unreasonable, or hopeless, or even when it means standing alone against shibboleths like Revolution and The Third World.”— Jewish-American literary and social critic Irving Howe (1920-1993), “What’s the Trouble?” in A Voice Still Heard: Selected Essays of Irving Howe, edited by Nina Howe with the assistance of Nicholas Howe Bukowski (2014)