“ He defended them because he believed that every social interest should have its chance. Louis Menand
“ Holmes writes, …I also would fight for some things—but instead of saying that they ought to be I merely say they are part of the kind of world that I like—or should like. Louis Menand
“ The indeterminacy of individual behavior can be regularized by considering people statistically at the level of the mass. Louis Menand
“ For Peirce, inquiry is always communal—it is the median of many observations that gives the position of the star—and the last analysis really is the last. In Peirce’s cosmology, everyone’s beliefs hav… Louis Menand
“ Everyone is simply riding the wave chance has put them on. Some people know how to surf; some people drown. Louis Menand
“ Darwin’s ideas are devices for generating data. Darwin’s theory opens possibilities for inquiry; Agassiz’s closes them. Louis Menand
“ [Dewey’s ‘Reflex Arc’ paper] is the strategy he followed in approaching every problem: expose a tacit hierarchy in the terms in which people conventionally think about it. We think that a response fol… Louis Menand
“ The solution has been to shift the totem of legitimacy from premises to procedures. We know an outcome is right not because it was derived from immutable principles, but because it was reached by foll… Louis Menand
“ It was not a matter of choosing sides, it was a matter of rising above the whole concept of sideness. Louis Menand
“ In a time when the chance of another civil war did not seem remote, a philosophy that warned against the idolatry of ideas was possibly the only philosophy on which a progressive politics could have b… Louis Menand
“ Holmes never mentions Abbott again in any of the war correspondence or the diaries that survive. Louis Menand
“ All that can be expected from modern improvements is that legislation should easily and quickly, yet not too quickly, modify itself in accordance with the will of the de facto supreme power in the com… Louis Menand
