41 Quotes by Henry Steele Commager

It seems fair to say that while the moral standards of the nineteenth century persisted almost unchanged into the twentieth, moral practices changed sharply, and that though the standards of the nineteenth century persisted the institutions that had sustained them and the sanctions that had enforced them lost influence and authority.

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 all of these, for without it we can have neither security nor prosperity nor enlightenment.

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

What every college must do is hold up before the young the spectacle of greatness.

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

The greatest danger that threatens us is neither heterodox thought nor orthodox thought, but the absence of thought.

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.

Our best people don't go into politics.

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