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Louis Menand Quotes

Everyone is simply riding the wave chance has put them on. Some people know how to surf; some people drown.

Louis Menand

Everyone is simply riding the wave chance has put them on. Some people know how to surf; some people drown.

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

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...

About Author
Louis Menand (; born January 21, 1952) is an American critic, essayist, and professor who wrote the Pulitzer-winning book The Metaphysical Club (2001), an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th- and early 20th-century America.

The biggest undergraduate major by far in the United States is business. Twenty-two percent of all bachelor’s degrees are awarded in that field. Ten percent of all bachelor’s degrees are awarded in ed...

Louis Menand

The biggest undergraduate major by far in the United States is business. Twenty-two percent of all bachelor’s degrees are awarded in that field. Ten percent of all bachelor’s degrees are awarded in ed...

James’s general position on the difference between the sexes, which was that woman is by nature inferior to man. She is man’s inferior in passion, his inferior in intellect, and his inferior in physic...

Louis Menand

James’s general position on the difference between the sexes, which was that woman is by nature inferior to man. She is man’s inferior in passion, his inferior in intellect, and his inferior in physic...

James believed that scientific inquiry, like any other form of inquiry, is an activity inspired and informed by our tastes, values, and hopes. But this does not, in his view, confer any special author...

Louis Menand

James believed that scientific inquiry, like any other form of inquiry, is an activity inspired and informed by our tastes, values, and hopes. But this does not, in his view, confer any special author...

The indeterminacy of individual behavior can be regularized by considering people statistically at the level of the mass.

Louis Menand

The indeterminacy of individual behavior can be regularized by considering people statistically at the level of the mass.

When you know that you know persecution comes easy.

Louis Menand

When you know that you know persecution comes easy.

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

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...

[Emerson] saw, in the beginning, no difference between abolitionism and the institutionalized religion he had rejected in the Divinity School address. They were both ways of discouraging people from t...

Louis Menand

[Emerson] saw, in the beginning, no difference between abolitionism and the institutionalized religion he had rejected in the Divinity School address. They were both ways of discouraging people from t...

The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to...

Louis Menand

The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence. This is a proposition that has an easy application and a difficult one. The easy application is to...

The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence.

Louis Menand

The lesson Holmes took from the war can be put in a sentence. It is that certitude leads to violence.

…in a universe in which events are uncertain and perception is fallible, knowing cannot be a matter of an individual mind ‘mirroring’ reality. Each mind reflects differently—even the same mind reflect...

Louis Menand

…in a universe in which events are uncertain and perception is fallible, knowing cannot be a matter of an individual mind ‘mirroring’ reality. Each mind reflects differently—even the same mind reflect...

[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

[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...

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.

Louis Menand

The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.

Statistical fiction,

Louis Menand

Statistical fiction,

From this premise, the usual conclusions follow: humankind is now separated from the true and the real; its destiny is to arrive at the consummation intended for it by God; philosophers are here to he...

Louis Menand

From this premise, the usual conclusions follow: humankind is now separated from the true and the real; its destiny is to arrive at the consummation intended for it by God; philosophers are here to he...

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

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...

Mixed with this frustration was the suspicion that Northern lives were being wasted because of mismanagement and political meddling, a suspicion reinforced by Lincoln’s firing of McClellan, who, despi...

Louis Menand

Mixed with this frustration was the suspicion that Northern lives were being wasted because of mismanagement and political meddling, a suspicion reinforced by Lincoln’s firing of McClellan, who, despi...

Darwin’s ideas are devices for generating data. Darwin’s theory opens possibilities for inquiry; Agassiz’s closes them.

Louis Menand

Darwin’s ideas are devices for generating data. Darwin’s theory opens possibilities for inquiry; Agassiz’s closes them.

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

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...