The Paranoid Style in American Politics Quotes

“Again, it is common knowledge that the movement against the fluoridation of municipal water supplies has been catnip for cranks of all kinds, especially for those who have obsessive fear of poisoning. It is conceivable that at some time scientists may turn up conclusive evidence that this practice is, on balance, harmful; and such a discovery would prove the antifluoridationists quite right on the substance of their position. But it could hardly, at the same time, validate the contentions of those among them who, in characteristic paranoid fashion, have charged that fluoridation was an attempt to advance socialism under the guise of public health or to rot out the brains of the community by introducing chemicals in the water supply in order to make people more vulnerable to socialist or communist schemes.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“These writers illustrate the central preconception of the paranoid style—the existence of a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of the most fiendish character.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“Again, it is common knowledge that the movement against the fluoridation of municipal water supplies has been catnip for cranks of all kinds, especially for those who have obsessive fear of poisoning.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy,1 he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“In fact, the idea of the paranoid style would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to people with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“ALTHOUGH American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)

“One of the most impressive facts about the paranoid style, in this connection, is that it represents an old and recurrent mode of expression in our public life which has frequently been linked with movements of suspicious discontent and whose content remains much the same even when it is adopted by men of distinctly different purposes. Our experience suggests too that, while it comes in waves of different intensity, it appears to be all but ineradicable.”
― Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics: An Essay: from The Paranoid Style in American Politics (Kindle Single)