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Richard Hofstadter Biography

Richard Hofstadter

Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916 – October 24, 1970) was an American historian and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. Hofstadter was the DeWitt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University. Rejecting his earlier approach to history from the far left, in the 1950s he embraced consensus history, becoming the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus," largely because of his emphasis on ideas and political culture rather than the day-to-day doings of politicians. His influence is ongoing, as modern critics profess admiration for the grace of his writing, and the depth of his insight.

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Richard Hofstadter Quotes

As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

Consummation, Pursuit, Pursuit Of Happiness, Truth, Turns

Intellect is resented as a form of power or privilege.

Form, Intellect, Power, Privilege, Resented

The American farmer, whose holdings were not so extensive as those of the grandee nor so tiny as those of the peasant, whose psychology was Protestant and bourgeois, and whose politics were petty-capitalist rather than traditionalist, had no reason to share the social outlook of the rural classes of Europe. In Europe land was limited and dear, while labor was abundant and relatively cheap; in America the ratio between land and labor was inverted.

America, Bourgeois, Europe, Farmer, Land, Reason

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.

Class, Hatred, Hatreds, Mind, Struggle

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.

Doubters, Mean, Sole, Though

It is a part of the intellectual's tragedy that the things he most values about himself and his work are quite unlike those society values in him.

Intellectual, Quite, Society, Tragedy, Values

We have learned so well how to absorb novelty that receptivity itself has turned into a kind of tradition- "the tradition of the new. " Yesterdays avant-garde experiment is today's chic and tomorrows cliche.

Avant Garde, Chic, Cliche, Kind, Today, Yesterday

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.

Errors, Fascinating, Imagination, Incompetence, Open, Points

The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die.

Bee, Bees, Die, Like, Party, Roles

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.

Consequence, Intellectual, Invariable, Twenties, Twenty, Years

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.

Likely, Luxury, Men, Play, United

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.

Commitment, Education, Ideas, Independent

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

Double, Fantasies, Fantasy, Real, Rest, World

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.

Age, Class, Past, Pointed, Proportionate

A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.

Failure, Failures, Insofar, Men, Political

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

Confronted, Evil, Luxury, Simple

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.

Adults, Children, Grave, Play, Playfulness, Readily

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.

Intellectual, Life, Lying, Quest, Quests, Uncertainties

Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan.

Catholicism, Pornography, Puritan

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.

Excellence, Fully, High, Kind, Needs

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