Perry Miller

Perry Miller

Perry G. Miller (February 25, 1905 – December 9, 1963) was an American intellectual historian and Harvard University professor. He was an authority on American Puritanism, and a founder of the field of American Studies. Alfred Kazin referred to him as "the master of American intellectual history". In his most famous book, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939), Miller adopted a cultural approach to illuminate the worldview of the Puritans, unlike previous historians who employed psychological and economic explanations of their beliefs and behavior.

Read more about Perry Miller:  Biography, Historiography, Influence, Legacy, Books

Famous quotes containing the words perry and/or miller:

    You’ll admit there’s always the possibility of some employee becoming disgruntled over some fancied injustice. Dissatisfaction always leads to temptation. There’s always purchasers for valuable secrets.
    —Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Donald Jordan, Murder by Television, trying to bribe Perry into revealing Professor Houghland’s secret (1935)

    Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It’s a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.
    —Henry Miller (1891–1980)