“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

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 11

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Henry Steele Commager 27

American historian 1902–1998

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