Quotes About Richard Hofstadter

If there is anything more dangerous to the life of the mind than having no independent commitment to ideas, it is having an excess of commitment to some special and constricting idea.

the danger that American society as a whole will over-esteem intellect or assign it such a transcendent value as to displace other legitimate values is one that hardly troubles us.

To be confronted with a simple and unqualified evil is no doubt a kind of luxury....

purity of a sort is easily had where responsibilities are not assumed. The