Richard Hofstadter Quotes
1916 - 1970
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It has beenour fateas a nation notto have ideologies but to be one.
Richard Hofstadter— Quoted in the NewYork Times, 2 Jul1989.
One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.
Richard Hofstadter— Chapter VI, part II (p. 245)
It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result ruthlessness in political life.
Richard Hofstadter— Introduction (p. 16)
Clearly, the need for political and economic reform was now felt more widely in the country at large. Another, more obscure process, traceable to the flexibility and opportunism of the American political system, was also at work: successful resistance to reform demands required a partial incorporation of the reform program.
Richard Hofstadter— Chapter IV, part I (p. 132)
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in a mordant protest written soon after the [1952] election, found the intellectual “in a situation he has not known for a generation.” After twenty years of Democratic rule, during which the intellectual had been in the main understood and respected, business had come back into power, bringing with it “the vulgarization which has been the almost invariable consequence of business supremacy.”
Richard Hofstadter— p. 4 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Anti-intellectualism ... has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 20 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 28 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
It is the historic glory of the intellectual class of the West in modern times that, of all the classes which could be called in any sense privileged, it has shown the largest and most consistent concern for the well-being of the classes which lie below it in the social scale.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 29 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
The intellectual ... may live for ideas, as I have said, but something must prevent him from living for one idea, from becoming obsessive or grotesque. Although there have been zealots whom we may still regard as intellectuals, zealotry is a defect of the breed and not of the essence.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 29 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 30 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 30 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
In using the terms play and playfulness, I do not intend to suggest any lack of seriousness; quite the contrary. Anyone who has watched children, or adults, at play will recognize that there is no contradiction between play and seriousness, and that some forms of play induce a measure of grave concentration not so readily called forth by work.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 30 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Intellect is neither practical nor impractical; it is extra-practical.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 30 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
To the zealot overcome by his piety and to the journeyman of ideas concerned only with his marketable mental skills, the beginning and end of ideas lies in their efficacy with respect to some goal external to intellectual processes.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 31 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
The intellectual’s ... playfulness, in its various manifestations, is likely to seem to most men a perverse luxury; in the United States the play of the mind is perhaps the only form of play that is not looked upon with the most tender indulgence. His piety is likely to seem nettlesome, if not actually dangerous. And neither quality is considered to contribute very much to the practical business of life.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 33 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
There has always been in our national experience a type of mind which elevates hatred to a kind of creed; for this mind, group hatreds take a place in politics similar to the class struggle in some other modern societies.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 37 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Intellect needs to be understood not as some kind of claim against the other human excellences for which a fatally high price has to be paid, but rather as a complement to them without which they cannot be fully consummated.
Richard Hofstadter— p. 46 (Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974))
Anti-intellectualism ... has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.
Richard Hofstadter— Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), p. 20
The utopia of the Populists was in the past, not in the future. According to the agrarian myth, the health of the state was proportionate to the degree to which it was dominated by the agricultural class, and this assumption pointed to the superiority of an earlier age.
Richard Hofstadter— Chapter II, part I (p. 62)
The nation seems to slouch onward into its uncertain future like some huge inarticulate beast, too much attainted by wounds and ailments to be robust, but too strong and resourceful to succumb.
Richard Hofstadter— Quoted in Hedrick Smith The Power Game (1988).
