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Quote by Bernard Bailyn

“The full bibliography of pamphlets relating to the Anglo-American struggle published in the colonies through the year 1776 contains not a dozen or so items but over four hundred.”

Quote by Bernard Bailyn

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Work

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

This book delves into the intellectual and philosophical underpinnings that led to the American Revolution, examining the key thinkers and concepts that shaped the revolutionary movement. more

Author

Bernard Bailyn is an American historian renowned for his research on early American history. His works delve into the social, political, and cultural dynamics of the American Revolution and the colonial period. more

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“The classics of the ancient world are everywhere in the literature of the Revolution, but thet are everywhere illustrative, not determinative, of thought”

World Literature Revolution Ancient Ancient World

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the "country" mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.”

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

“The theory of politics that emerges from the political literature of the pre-Revolutionary years rests on the belief that what lay behind every political scene, the ultimate explanation of every political controversy, was the disposition of power.”

Years Political Literature Belief Behinds Theory Scene Ultimate Lays Revolutionary Explanation Disposition Controversy

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“What gave transcendent importance to the aggressiveness of power was the fact that its natural prey, its necessary victim, was liberty, or law, or right.”

Facts Law Natural Liberty Importance Victim Prey Transcendent Aggressiveness

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“The wielders of power did not speak for it, nor did they naturally serve it. Their interest was to use and develop power, no less natural and necessary than liberty but more dangerous.”

Use Speak Interest Natural Liberty Dangerous

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“Everyone knew that democracy - direct rule by all the people - required such spartan, soul-denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race.”

People Made Race Poverty Virtue Democracy Behavior Direct

Author:Bernard Bailyn

“That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident.”

Political Social Constitution Crisis Finals Corruption Evident Colonists

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.”

Facts Liberty Importance Corruption Conspiracy Risen Colonists

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“It was an elevating, transforming vision: a new, fresh, vigorous, and above all morally regenerate people rising from the obscurity to defend the battlements of liberty and then in triumph standing forth, heartening and sustaining the cause of freedom everywhere.”

People Causes Liberty Vision Standing Triumph Rising Transforming Obscurity Vigorous Sustaining Elevating

Book:The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

“The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.”

Long Ideas Facts Moral Conditions Creating Sanctions Chaotic Colonists

Author:Bernard Bailyn