The Quakers lacked neither courage nor energy. It was not so much the actual content of their creed as the uncompromising obstinancy with which they hung on to it, and their attitude toward themselves, that were decisive. The two flaws fatal to the influence of this remarkable people on American culture were, first, an urge toward martydom, and a preoccupation with the purity of their own souls; and, second, a regidity in all their beliefs.
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The Puritan success was accompanied, if not actually made possible, by the decline of American Puritanism as an uncompromising theology.
--Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Chapter 6
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