historian
who helped define Modern liberalism in the United States for two generations through his forty books and 700 essays and reviews. His principal scholarly works were his 1936 biography of Theodore Parker
; his intellectual history The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character since the 1880's (1950), which focuses on the evolution of liberalism in the American political mind from the 1880s to the 1940s; and his intellectual history Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (1977).
"Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
"If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
"Change does not necessarily assure progress, but progress implacably requires change. Education is essential to change, for education creates both new wants and the ability to satisfy them."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
"Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates in the end the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
"The greatest danger we face is not any particular kind of thought. The greatest danger we face is absence of thought."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
"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."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele
Henry S. Commager said that the US Constitution was the best chance for political freedom, calling it a "perfect blueprint."
Category:Historians|Commager, Henry Steele