Herbert Croly

The average American is nothing if not patriotic.

— Herbert Croly

The national school is not a lecture hall or a library. Its schooling consists chiefly in experimental collective action aimed at the…

— Herbert Croly

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that…

— Herbert Croly

If it be true that democracy is based upon the assumption that every man shall serve his fellow man, the organization of…

— Herbert Croly

When the Promise of American life is conceived as a national ideal, whose fulfillment is a matter of artful and laborious work,…

— Herbert Croly

The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle,…

— Herbert Croly

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

— Herbert Croly

When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was…

— Herbert Croly

The years between 1800 and 1825 were distinguished, so far as our domestic development was concerned, by the growth of the Western…

— Herbert Croly

The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the…

— Herbert Croly

The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by…

— Herbert Croly

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be…

— Herbert Croly

Of course, Americans have no monopoly of patriotic enthusiasm and good faith.

— Herbert Croly

The majority of men cannot be made disinterested for life by exhortation, by religious services, by any expenditure of subsidized works, or…

— Herbert Croly

Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. If human nature cannot be improved by institutions, democracy is…

— Herbert Croly

Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of…

— Herbert Croly

The interest which lay behind Federalism was that of well-to-do citizens in a stable political and social order, and this interest aroused…

— Herbert Croly

The essential nature of a democracy compels it to insist that individual power of all kinds, political, economic, or intellectual, shall not…

— Herbert Croly

In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not…

— Herbert Croly

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life…

— Herbert Croly

Women ... are completely alone, though they were born and bred upon this soil, as if they belonged to another class in creation.

— Herbert Croly

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

— Herbert Croly

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.

— Herbert Croly

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain…

— Herbert Croly

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality.…

— Herbert Croly