Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who "speak truth to power" but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.
Depending on the speaker, this quote has the potential for reinforcing substantial status quo bias, since taking it serious would dramatically reduce the frequency of truly attempting to speak truth to power. In other words, the quote seems tailor-made for justifying a generalized counter-argument to all speak-truth-to-power actions.
Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules: