Absurdity Quote by Henry Steele Commager

“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 all we must impose some order upon it.”

Henry Steele Commager

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More by Henry Steele Commager

It's awfully hard to be the son of a great man and also of a half-crazy woman.

Henry Steele Commager

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America was born of revolt, flourished in dissent, became great through experimentation.

Henry Steele Commager

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The American people...have a stake in non-conformity. For they know that the American genius is non-conformist.

Henry Steele Commager

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We should not be surprised that the Founding Fathers didn't foresee everything, when we see that the current Fathers hardly ever foresee anything.

Henry Steele Commager

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We should not forget that our tradition is one of protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past…

Henry Steele Commager

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The justification and the purpose of freedom of speech is not to indulge those who want to speak their minds. It is to prevent…

Henry Steele Commager

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“A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows that from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas of freedom. A…

Henry Steele Commager

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The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of…

Henry Steele Commager

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A free society cherishes nonconformity. It knows from the non-conformist, from the eccentric, have come many of the great ideas.

Henry Steele Commager

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History is organized memory, and the organization is all important!

Henry Steele Commager

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It seems fair to say that while the moral standards of the nineteenth century persisted almost unchanged into the twentieth, moral practices changed sharply,…

Henry Steele Commager

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In the long run [censorship] will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience.

Henry Steele Commager

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Explore all 38 Henry Steele Commager quotes

More Absurdity quotes

Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's…

Phil Ochs

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The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

Arthur Koestler

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For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

H. L. Mencken

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Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion…

Voltaire

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One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we…

Thomas Paine

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Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

Jane Austen

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Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create…

Aldous Huxley