Skip to content

Whatever the intellectual is too certain of, if he is healthily playful, he begins to find unsatisfactory. The meaning of his intellectual life lies not in the possession of truth but in the quest for new uncertainties.

— Richard Hofstadter

Another quote →

More quotes by Richard Hofstadter

As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.

Intellectualism, though by no means confined to doubters, is often the sole piety of the skeptic.

Intellect is neither practical nor impractical; it is extra-practical.

Intellect needs to be understood not as some kind of claim against the other human excellences for which a fatally high price has to be paid, but rather as a complement to them without which they cannot be fully consummated.

The higher paranoid scholarship is nothing if not coherent — in fact the paranoid mind is far more coherent than the real world.

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

All Richard Hofstadter quotes →

Attribution

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