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Larry Siedentop Quotes

1936–2024 United States

Sir Larry Alan Siedentop CBE (24 May 1936 – 13 June 2024) was an American-born British political philosopher with a special interest in 19th-century French liberalism. He was the author of Democracy in Europe (2000) and Inventing the Individual (2014) and an occasional contributor to several major British daily newspapers, including the Financial Times and The Times.

United States
Philosophers

Random Larry Siedentop quote

5 quotes

Economism...has knocked the citizen off his pedestal and replaced him with the consumer.

Liberalism, the dominant ideology of our time, has been dangerously distorted by the impact of economism. It is that impact which has knocked the citizen off his pedestal and replaced him with the consumer.

Democracy in Europe (2001)

The Jewish sense of time was...unilinear rather than cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall control and direction of events.

Inventing the Individual (2014)

If we want to understand the distinctive constitution of Europe, we must go back to its religious foundations. For the moral beliefs which Christianity fostered still underpin civil society in Europe, the institutions that surround us.

Democracy in Europe (2001)

Only the pride of the intellect could suppose that the human will can be completely self-determining. The incarnation revealed that something more is needed. ‘My mind, questioning itself upon its own powers, feels that it cannot rightly trust its own report.’ Augustine’s conception of the self became a subtle mixture of autonomy and dependence.

Inventing the Individual (2014)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Larry Siedentop (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.