It is a poor head that cannot find plausible reason for doing what the heart wants to do.
Richard HofstadterOne of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged.
Richard HofstadterThe idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Richard HofstadterTo be confronted with a simple and unqualified evil is no doubt a kind of luxury.
Richard HofstadterA university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind.
Richard Hofstadter