"Ideas are not godlings that spring perfect-winged from the head of Jove; they are not flowers that bloom in a walled garden; they are weapons hammered out on the anvil of human needs. Freedom to think is bought with a price; and to ignore the price is to lose all sense of values. To love ideas is excellent, but to understand how ideas themselves are conditioned by social forces, is better still. To desire culture, to enjoy commerce with the best that has been known and thought in the world is excellent also; but to understand the dynamics which lies back of all culture signifies more. Men who will be free, struggle to be free, fashion themselves ideas for swords to fight with. To consider the sword apart from the struggle is to turn dilettante and a frequenter of museums."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersNon-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesHarvard University alumniPeople from Illinois
Original Language: English
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"Economics and Criticism" (1917); ed. Vernon Parrington Jr., The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 3 (July, 1953), p. 99
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vernon_Louis_Parrington
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Vernon Louis Parrington
Vernon Louis Parrington (August 3, 1871 – June 16, 1929) was an American literary historian, scholar, and college football coach. His three-volume history of American letters, Main Currents in American Thought, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1928 and was one of the most influential books for American historians of its time. Parrington taught at the College of Emporia, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Washington. He was also the head football coach at the College of Empori
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