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Uncertain of principles, we fall back on emotion; unfamiliar with the past, we are afraid of the future. Increasingly we look to men, ideas, and institutions not from the point of view of how they work, but from the point of view of how they ought to work…

— Henry Steele Commager Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

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More quotes by Henry Steele Commager

We do not protect freedom in order to indulge error. We protect freedom in order to discover truth.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

The most effective censorship is not, in fact, legal; in a democracy—as Tocqueville pointed out in Democracy in America—it is public opinion.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

The Bill of Rights was not written to protect governments from trouble. It was written precisely to give the people the constitutional means to cause trouble for governments they no longer trusted.

Two centuries ago our forefathers brought forth a new nation; now we must join with others to bring forth a new world order.

writing for the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia in A Declaration of INTERdependence (1976)

A nation that silences or intimidates original minds is left only with unoriginal minds and cannot hope to hold its own in the competition of peace or of war.

Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Henry Steele Commager (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.