Richard Hofstadter Quotes

Men of thoughts should have nothing to do with action.

I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

To know, to think, to dream. That is everything.

Idealism leads to realism if it is strictly thought out.

Clearly, I am not an anarchist. Philosophically, I might be, but I think in practical terms.

The theories and speculations of men concern us more than their puny accomplishment. It is with a certain coldness and languor that we loiter about the actual and so-called practical.

Man is different from animals in that he speculates, a high-risk activity.

Theories have nothing to do with life.

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.

It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than it is to apply them.

A concept is stronger than a fact.

We have wasted our spirit in the regions of the abstract and general just as the monks let it wither in the world of prayer and contemplation.

Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.

Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.

To live is to think.

To understand the theory which underlies all things is not sufficient. Theory is but the preparation for practice.

Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

On Pragmatism: It's all very well in theory but it doesn't work in practice

The only thing about a man that is a man is his mind.

All theories are legitimate, no matter. What matters is what you do with them.

Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.

A great scholar is seldom a great philosopher.

I don't think that everyone should have a philosophical answer to any given question. There are things that need to be done.

In all the universe there is nothing more precious than mind.

It is difficult to connect general principles with such thoroughly concrete things as children.