Historian Quotes

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved. One can trust nobody and nothing.

Absolute liberty is absence of restraint; responsibility is restraint; therefore, the ideally free individual is responsible to himself.

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Friends are born, not made.

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by 500 readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the 500, he reaches the five hundred thousand.

Politics, as a practice, whatever its profession, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.

One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

There is not a soul who does not have to beg alms of another, either a smile, a handshake, or a fond eye.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the f

The man who prefers his country before any other duty shows the same spirit as the man who surrenders every right to the state. They both deny that right is superior to authority.

If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

Be not content with the best book; seek sidelights from the others; have no favourites.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

There are two things which cannot be attacked in front: ignorance and narrow-mindedness. They can only be shaken by the simple development of the contrary qualities. They will not bear discussion.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.