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 More Quotes by Richard Hofstadter More Quotes From 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 delicate-things evil character 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. Richard Hofstadter values tragedy intellectual 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 hemlock gowns degrees 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 excellence kind needs 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 skills lying ideas The role of third parties is to sting like a bee, then die. Richard Hofstadter roles party bees Intellect is neither practical nor impractical; it is extra-practical. Richard Hofstadter intellect practicals extras Anti-Catholicism has always been the pornography of the Puritan. Richard Hofstadter puritan catholicism pornography To be confronted with a simple and unqualified evil is no doubt a kind of luxury. Richard Hofstadter luxury simple evil To be sick and helpless is a humiliating experience. Prolonged illness also carries the hazard of narcissistic self-absorption. Richard Hofstadter hazards sick self 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. Richard Hofstadter avant-garde yesterday today 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 luxury play men The intellectual is engage-he is pledged, committed, enlisted. What everyone else is willing to admit, namely that ideas and abstractions are of signal importance in human life, he imperatively feels. Richard Hofstadter signals intellectual ideas 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 intellectual essence ideas 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 intellectual class lying 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 twenties intellectual years 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 age class past
