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

—Henry Steele Commager in Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent

danger thought diversity absent-mindedness

About Henry Steele Commager

Portrait of Henry Steele Commager

Henry Steele Commager (October 25, 1902 – March 2, 1998) was an American historian. As one of the most active and prolific liberal intellectuals of his time, with 40 books and 700 essays and reviews, he helped define modern liberalism in the United States.

More quotations from Henry Steele Commager

Freedom in 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.

—Henry Steele Commager in Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent

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More quotations tagged with “thought”

I have not spoken to him for ten years, but I thought of him every single day.

—Ruth Ware in Dark Wood

time memory thought

There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.

—Robert Quillen

How many scholars are there whose single book or article has generated more intellectual energy than the collected works of other, quantitatively far more 'productive,' scholars? The commensurating device known as the 'tape measure' may tell us that a Vermeer interior and a cow plop are both twenty inches across; there, however, the similarity ends.

—James C. Scott in Two Cheers for Anarchism

art thought work creativity originality

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled sea of thought.

—John Kenneth Galbraith

thought nonsense

The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has.

—Michelangelo

History

7 Nov 2022 Added