For Rousseau and Mandeville the absence of a moral instinct meant the laws of society had no moral validity, they were nothing but the inventions of …

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material…

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

Nothing is as seductive as the assurance of success.

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

In its sentimental mode, compassion is an exercise in moral indignation, in feeling good rather than doing good ... In its unsentimental mode, compas…

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

absolute liberty ... tends to corrupt absolutely.

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

The present illegitimacy ratio is not only unprecedented in the past two centuries; it is unprecedented, so far as we know, in American history going…

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

The real movement of history, it turns out, is fueled not by matter but by spirit, by the will to freedom.

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

As liberty of thought is absolute, so is liberty of speech, which is 'inseparable' from the liberty of thought. Liberty of speech, moreover, is essen…

- Gertrude Himmelfarb

Without will, without individuals, there are no heroes. But neither are there villains. And the absence of villains is as prostrating, as soul-destro…

- Gertrude Himmelfarb