Henry Steele Commager Quotes

22 quotes in 331 categories

• Freedom is not a luxury that we can indulge in when at last we have security and prosperity and enlightenment; it is, rather, antecedent to…
• The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent error…
• America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation.
• We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt and that it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past.…
• The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.
• And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping…
• Its awfully hard to be the son of a great man and also of a half-crazy woman.
• The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought.
• The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause…
• If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
• It is probably safe to say that over a long period of time, political morality has been as high as business morality.
• It is sobering to recall that though the Japanese relocation program, carried through at such incalculable cost in misery and tragedy, was justified on the…
• Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.
• History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at…
• The English love for privacy is proverbial, and has not been exaggerated. A stranger who strikes up a conversation is looked upon with suspicion -…
• Censorship always defeats it own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.
• Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change.
• Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them.
• Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.
• The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising…

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