The consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist

The Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 10 “A Classless Soceity” (1958 ed.)
    (Source)