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Authors:

Richard Hofstadter quotes

American Historian August 6, 1916 – October 24, 1970

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Quotes

Tocqueville saw that the life of constant action and decision which was entailed by the democratic and businesslike character of American life put a premium upon rough and ready habits of mind, quick decision, and the prompt seizure of opportunities - and that all this activity was not propitious for deliberation, elaboration, or precision in thought. Richard Hofstadter
Any historian of warfare knows that it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, we can see how many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination: treason in high places can be found at almost every turning -- and in the end the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to... Richard Hofstadter
The delicate thing about the university is that it has a mixed character, that it is suspended between its position in the eternal world, with all its corruption and evils and cruelties, and the splendid world of our imagination. Richard Hofstadter
A university's essential character is that of being a center of free inquiry and criticism - a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else. Richard Hofstadter
It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat. Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter quote: "It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing..."
It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing what the heart wants to do. Richard Hofstadter
If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. Richard Hofstadter

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