Historian Quotes

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.

The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.

Persistence with patience and prayer pays with profits, prosperity and peace of mind.

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

The worst thing I can do is nothing.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide. "That is because I know what life is," said Martin.

There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel.

In my free time I do differential and integral calculus.

Money plays the largest part in determining the course of history.

The man who holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare.

Never trust a man who says he is only a little crooked, and that the crookedness is exercised in your interest.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.

Virtuous men alone possess friends.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Misery motivates, not utopia.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

Hope should no more be a virtue than fear; we fear and we hope, according to what is promised or threatened us.

Let each of us boldly and honestly say: How little it is that I really know!

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.

There are two things for which animals are to be envied: they know nothing of future evils, or of what people say about them.

Every child has inside him an aching void for excitement and if we don't fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and good for him, he will fill it with something which is exciting and interesting and which isn't good for him.

Originality is nothing but judicious plagiarism.

I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones.

I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.

The object of art like every other product creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection.A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

Thehighest form of success comes to the man who does not shrink fromdanger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who, out of these, winsthe splendid ultimate triumph.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.

An object of art creates a public capable of finding pleasure in its beauty. Production, therefore, not only produces an object for the subject, but also a subject for the object.

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

The clock is running. Make the most of today. Time waits for no man. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it is called the present.

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

Death is always, under all circumstances, a tragedy, for if it is not then it means that life has become one.

People must have renounced, it seems to me, all natural intelligence to dare to advance that animals are but animated machines.... It appears to me, besides, that such people can never have observed with attention the character of animals, not to have distinguished among them the different voices of need, of suffering, of joy, of pain, of love, of anger, and of all their affections. It would be very strange that they should express so well what they could not feel.

The only way to see the value of a play is to see it acted.

History is nothing but a pack of tricks that we play upon the dead.

Present opportunities are not to be neglected; they rarely visit us twice.

Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.

You cannot create prosperity by law. Sustained thrift, industry, application, intelligence, are the only things that ever do, or ever will, create prosperity. But you can very easily destroy prosperity by law.

It is easy to gain a definite notion of the furnishing of colonial houses from a contemporary and reliable source - the inventories of the estates of the colonists.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

The brank, or scold's bridle, was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit.

War is the greatest of all crimes; and yet there is no aggressor who does not color his crime with the pretext of justice.

Every day may not be good... but there's something good in every day

The sovereign is called a tyrant who knows no laws but his caprice.

I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of -- a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of -- the history of the world of the past.

The world will be for the common people, and the sounds of Happiness will reach even the deepest springs.

Every man owes a part of his time and money to the business or industry in which he is engaged. No man has the moral right to withhold his support from an organization that is striving to improve conditions within his sphere.

The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor.