top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Historian
"The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand."
28
"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."
28
"The Psalms, the anthology of the hymns of Israel, are still used by Christians."
28
"Great men have great discipline."
28
"The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally."
War,
28
"Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts."
28
"My early and invincible love of reading I would not exchange for all the riches of India."
28
"Our greatest power as nations and individuals is not the ability to employ assault weapons, suicide bombers, and drones to destroy each other. The greater more creative powers with which we may arm ourselves are grace and compassion sufficient enough to love and save each other."
28
"Elegance is timeless."
28
"Two things a wise man never discloses to the public, his money and his women."
28
"Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis."
28
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one."
28
"As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines."
28
"The author takes the position that the consumer pays the tax, and as such every individual of the social order should be given unlimited opportunity to make the most of himself."
28
"I may not be where I want to be but I'm thankful for not being where I used to be."
28
"We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff."
28
"He was always the bridge, between men as well as between ideas."
28
"As she sallied forth from her boudoir, you would never have guessed how quickly she could strip for action."
28
"But which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales."
28
"Behind every great man is a man greater, his father."
28
"In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty."
28
"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."
27
"He has not yet become an elder statesman, though his foreign policy credentials are considerable, but he is certainly our ancient mariner, forever tugging at our sleeve to let him tell his tale of what really happened."
27
"Well, if they are trying to kill you, on the whole they're the people you have to kill, aren't they?"
27
"For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals."
27
"Thus the whole country was broken into many shreds and patches of sovereignty."
27
"Even the respectable have a small anarchist hidden on the inside."
27
"If Liberia has failed, then, it is no evidence of the failure of the Negro in government. It is merely evidence of the failure of slavery."
27
"Courses on historical methodology are not worth the time that they take up. I shall never give one myself, and I have observed that many of my colleagues who do give such courses refrain from exemplifying their methods by writing anything."
27
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
27
bottom of page