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David Hackett Fischer Quotes

The most important fact about American liberty is that it has never been a single idea, but a set of different and even contrary traditions in creative tension with one another. This diversity of libertarian ideas has

The most important fact about American liberty is that it has never been a single idea, but a set of different and even contrary traditions in creative tension with one another. This diversity of libertarian ideas has created a culture of freedom which is more open and expansive than any unitary tradition alone could possibly be.

David Hackett Fischer
Ideas, Diversity, Creative
David Hackett Fischer (1991). “Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America”, p.537, Oxford University Press

The only creature less fashionable in academia than the stereotypical 'dead white male,' is the dead white male on horseback.

David Hackett Fischer
White, Males, Academia

Many pundits today are in the habit of misquoting Santayana's epigram, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Maybe some people have come to grief this way, but they are probably fewer than those who have fallen into the opposite error. One is apt to perish in politics from too much memory, Tocqueville wrote somewhere, with equal truth and greater insight.

David Hackett Fischer
Memories, Grief, Past

Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.

David Hackett Fischer
War, Fighting, Winning
David Hackett Fischer (2006). “Washington's Crossing”, p.370, Oxford University Press

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