Historian Quotes

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

Washington's character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.

You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

Custer had dead heroes. Crazy Horse had only live ones.

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.

It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry.

Age acquires no value save through thought and discipline.

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind.

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill behaves any of us to find fault with the rest of us.

There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.

It is always good men who do the most harm in the world.

Intimates are predestined.

I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Every man who has at last succeeded, after long effort, in calling up the divinity which lies hidden in a woman's heart, is startled to find that he must obey the God he summoned.

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

A man must now swallow more belief than he can digest.

A friend in power is a friend lost.