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Quotes by Historian
"The Psalms, the anthology of the hymns of Israel, are still used by Christians."
37
"He wanted AFFIRMATION rather than INFORMATION."
37
"With my ninth mind I resurrect my firstand dance slow to the music of my soul made new."
37
"The very concept of history implies the scholar and the reader. Without a generation of civilized people to study history, to preserve its records, to absorb its lessons and relate them to its own problems, history, too, would lose its meaning."
37
"The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender."
37
"Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts."
37
"A wife's loyalty is tested when her husband has nothing. A husband's loyalty is tested when he has everything."
37
"Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge."
37
"It is sad that people need alcohol to make them happy."
37
"Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances."
37
"The big biography of Lincoln necessarily had to do so much with his political career, his ambitions, his accomplishments in public, with less time to spend on his private life, his inner life, and I thought this might be a way of getting at that."
37
"A minister's (cabinet member's) function was not to DO the work but to see that it got done."
37
"I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies."
37
"Systematic philosophical and practical anti-intellectualism such as we are witnessing appears to be something truly novel in the history of human culture."
37
"We can't live without taxes, but we sure would like to have good ones."
37
"Government was rarely more than a choice between the disastrous and the unpalatable."
37
"The more business one has, the more you are able to accomplish, for you learn to economize your time."
37
"The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century."
37
"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."
37
"A poem conveys not a message so much as the provenance of a message, an advent of sense."
37
"Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies."
36
"Discount air fares, a car in every parking space and the interstate highway system have made every place accessible - and every place alike."
36
"Liberals subscribe to the new flexible, pluralistic definition of the family; their defense of families carries no conviction."
36
"The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it."
36
"You can parody and make fun of almost anything, but that does not turn the universe into a caricature."
36
"That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy."
36
"The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system."
36
"Excuses are merely nails used to build a house of failure."
36
"There is hardly an absurdity of the past that cannot be found flourishing somewhere in the present. Underneath all civilization, ancient or modern, moved and still moves a sea of magic, superstition and sorcery. Perhaps they will remain when the works of our reason have passed away."
36
"We are a conquering race. We must obey our blood and occupy new markets and if necessary new lands."
36
"You have no idea how promising the world begins to look once you have decided to have it all for yourself. And how much healthier your decisions are once they become entirely selfish."
36
"Between the happening of a historical process and its recognition by rulers, a lag stretches, full of pitfalls."
36
"Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles."
36
"Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of barbarism, and falls at the greatest distance from its trunk."
36
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