Historian Quotes

“Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.”

“There is no effort without error or shortcoming.”

“Everyone loves justice in the affairs of another.”

“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.”

“Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.”

“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”

“Performance should be made square with promise.”

“Weasel words from mollycoddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from greathearts. Manly men must emerge for this hour of trial.”

“The nation should be ruled by the Ten Commandments.”

“Don't spread patriotism too thin.”

“No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.”

“The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.”

“In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character.”

“All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.”

“The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”

“Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them.... If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.”

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

“The party belongs to the millions of the rank and file. It does not belong to the handful of politicians who have assumed fraudulently to upset the will of the rank and file. The action of these men is in no sense "regular," as they claim it to be.... theft and dishonesty cannot give and never shall give a title to regularity.”

“Gradually the true Mason gains experience in using these working tools and can observe subtler and subtler indications of personal flaws.”

“What I am to be, I am becoming.”

“Let us speak courteously, deal fairly, and keep ourselves armed and ready.”

“No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.”

“Some reformers may urge that in the ages distant future, patriotism, like the habit of monogamous marriage, will become a needless and obsolete virtue; but just at present the man who loves other countries as much as he does his own is quite as noxious a member of society as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his wife. Love of country is an elemental virtue, like love of home.”

“Work hard at work worth doing.”

“A really great people, proud and high spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor.”