Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.
- Herbert Croly Quote

I am not a prophet in any sense of the word, and I entertain an active and intense dislike of the foregoing mixture of optimism, fatalism, and conservatism.
- Herbert Croly Quote

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.
- Herbert Croly Quote

Let it be immediately added, however, that this economic independence and prosperity has always been absolutely associated in the American mind with free political institutions.
- Herbert Croly Quote

Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.
- Herbert Croly Quote

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The American economic, political, and social organization has given to its citizens the benefits of material prosperity, political liberty, and a wholesome natural equality; and this achievement is a gain, not only to Americans, but to the world and to civilization.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The higher American patriotism, on the other hand, combines loyalty to historical tradition and precedent with the imaginative projection of an ideal national Promise.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The moral and social aspiration proper to American life is, of course, the aspiration vaguely described by the word democratic; and the actual achievement of the American nation points towards an adequate and fruitful definition of the democratic ideal.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The more consciously democratic Americans became, however, the less they were satisfied with a conception of the Promised Land, which went no farther than a pervasive economic prosperity guaranteed by free institutions.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal.
- Herbert Croly Quote

The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created.
- Herbert Croly Quote

To the European immigrant - that is, to the aliens who have been converted into Americans by the advantages of American life - the Promise of America has consisted largely in the opportunity which it offered of economic independence and prosperity.
- Herbert Croly Quote

Unless the great majority of Americans not only have, but believe they have, a fair chance, the better American future will be dangerously compromised.
- Herbert Croly Quote

When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was almost completely woven.
- Herbert Croly Quote