Historian Quotes

Many of the political jokes that circulated in the Third Reich were directed at Goering. He collected them [all] in a large leather notebook and delighted in re-telling most of them to his friends.

An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces.

Nineteen forty-five marked the nadir of Western Civilization.

Modris Eksteins

Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

He [Charles Haughey] was a very promising minister in the '60s, but once he became leader all he was concerned with was staying leader. It was always about the cult of leadership. His sense of himself was much more important than any vision he had for the country. People say he discovered fiscal rectitude in '87, and people talk about his contribution to Anglo-Irish affairs, but really if you try and look for any consistency in his affairs after the late '70s you can't find it because it's just about him.

Diarmaid Ferriter

The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: "I have never had a plan of operations."
Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Our religion keeps reminding us that we aren't just will and thoughts. We're also sand and wind and thunder. Rain. The seasons. All those things. You learn to respect everything because you are everything. If you respect yourself, you respect all things.

William Least Heat-Moon

The temperament of a collector is an interesting one; after all, necessity is never the raison d'être of a collection. And since a collection can never be complete — there is always another item or a better version available — its creation requires a predatory love of objects and an endless appetite.

The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations — there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole, — an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself — is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.

Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné

Now, the truth of the matter is that the idea of the meaning of the word 'federal' underwent a change from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution. Under the Constitution, the states gave up their sovereignty in the Calhounian sense. And if you have any doubt about that, let me just read a sentence from George Washington. 'It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all'. So all the rights of independent sovereignty, or some of those rights, have been surrendered.

In America man never obeys man, but justice or the law.

Alexis de Tocqueville

How could anyone be "Cary Grant"? But how can anyone, ever after, not consider the attempt?

Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family.

I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

His [the Virginian's] dream was to found an aristocratic republic, in which superior individuals would emerge to rule the many.

Clifford Dowdey

The second law, Rakove's law of principle and politics, states that the citizen is influenced by principle in direct proportion to his distance from the political situation.

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair.

History is primarily a socio-psychological science. In the conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical investigation...we are at the turn of the stream, the parting of the ways in historical science.

Karl Gotthard Lamprecht

Effective coordination of throughput required the placing of vigorous management controls over these despots.

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

The traveler used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter.

Daniel J. Boorstin

The itch of inquiry is ever vehement in him [the statistician], and he attaches himself to new questions as buoys made to float him into paradise.

Marshall Monroe Kirkman

I do not think that a man's rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his loss of office should be equated with his fall.

Isaac Deutscher

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Constance Rourke

Give me a well-cooked, well-served meal, a bouquet, and a sunset, and I can do more for a man's soul than all the cant ever preached. I can even do it without a sunset!

Ann Ellis Hanson