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The Age of Reform QUOTES

The Age of Reform QUOTES

1 " What came in the end was only a small war and a quick victory; when the farmers and the gentlemen finally did coalesce in politics, they produced only the genial reforms of Progressivism; and the man on the white horse turned out to be just a graduate of the Harvard boxing squad, equipped with an immense bag of platitudes, and quite willing to play the democratic game. "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform

2 " Major parties have lived more for patronage than for principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in power, to arrange sufficiently satisfactory compromises of interests to remain there. "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform

3 " It is possible that the distinction between moral relativism and moral absolutism has sometimes been blurred because an excessively consistent practice of either leads to the same practical result—ruthlessness in political life. "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform

4 " Progressivism, in short, was to a very considerable extent led by men who suffered from the events of their time not through a shrinkage in their means but through the changed pattern in the distribution of deference and power. "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform

5 " Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die. "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform

6 " the product of a freed people that have not the spirit to be free.… We "

― Richard Hofstadter , The Age of Reform