Historian Quotes

Avarice is the vice of declining years.

Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are all blindly adopted, the second willfully preferred.

The fears of one class of men are not the measure of the rights of another.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

Where the people possess no authority, their rights obtain no respect.

By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

In nine times out of ten, the slanderous tongue belongs to a disappointed person.

The opera is like a husband with a foreign title - expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge.

The New England conscience does not stop you from doing what you shouldn't-it just stops you from enjoying it.

I can't take a well-tanned person seriously.

A 'good' family, it seems, is one that used to be better.

The facts of life are very stubborn things.

There are three terrible ages of childhood - 1 to 10, 10 to 20, and 20 to 30.

As anyone who has ever been around a cat for any length of time well knows, cats have enormous patience with the limitations of the human kind.

I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.

History is everything that has ever happened.

Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions.

Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.

Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.

Dams have harmed our wildlife and made rivers less useful for recreation.

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.

American is the first democratic nation-state.

American corporations hate to give away money.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.