"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."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Academics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesJews from the United StatesPeople from Buffalo
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 29
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Hofstadter
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Richard Hofstadter
Richard Hofstadter (August 6, 1916 – August 24, 1970) was an American historian, Professor of American History at Columbia University and public intellectual of the mid-20th century. He became the "iconic historian of postwar liberal consensus", largely due to his emphasis on ideas and political culture rather than the day-to-day actions of politicians.
40 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Richard Hofstadter →
Related Quotes
"While early American society was an agrarian society, it was fast becoming more commercial, and commercial goals made…"
"Out of the beliefs nourished by the agrarian myth there had arisen the notion that the city was a parasitical growth …"
"The American farmer, whose holdings were not so extensive as those of the grandee nor so tiny as those of the peasant…"
"The utopia of the Populists was in the past, not in the future. According to the agrarian myth, the health of the sta…"
"Anti-intellectualism … has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the ad…"
"Major parties have lived more for patronage than for principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently …"
"Clearly, the need for political and economic reform was now felt more widely in the country at large. Another, more o…"
"The long-range trend toward federal regulation, which found its beginnings in the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 and…"
"One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identif…"
"It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because …"