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Quotes by Historian
"In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know."
38
"Art is expression, and to have high expression you must have something high to express."
38
"Common sense varies among the young, as among the old."
38
"We have to make philosophy itself an object of philosophical concern."
38
"Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels."
38
"Anyone can write one book: even politicians do it. Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer."
38
"A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn."
38
"Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda."
38
"It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions."
38
"Most of these alternative arrangements, so-called, arise out of the ruins of marriages, not as an improvement of old fashioned marriage."
38
"The strongest bank in the United States will last only so long as the people will have sufficient confidence in it to keep their money there."
38
"The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event."
38
"We are living in an era in which billions of people are grappling to promote communication, tolerance, and understanding over the more destructive forces of war, terrorism, and political chaos that have characterized the beginning of the 21st Century."
38
"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries."
38
"A new civilization was not to be improvised by a single mind."
38
"To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population."
38
"Better than anything else in our culture, it enables fathers and sons to speak on a level playing field while building up from within a personal history of shared experience - a group history - that may be tapped into at will in years to come."
38
"In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States."
38
"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say."
38
"The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies."
38
"My father felt that his world of ideas was too liberal for traditional rabbinical teachings, and he looked for a chance to find a way in life."
38
"From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon."
37
"On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act."
37
"The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving."
37
"Yet enthusiasm is no excuse for the historian going off balance. He should remind the reader that outcomes were neither inevitable nor foreordained, but subject to a thousand changes and chances."
37
"They still have some money, and they have needs to supply. They must begin immediately to pool their earnings and organize industries to participate in supplying social and economic demands."
37
"The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness."
37
"Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been done."
37
"Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written."
37
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