Famous quotes by Historians

"Culture must have its ultimate aim in the metaphysical, or it will cease to be culture"

Johan Huizinga, Historian

"A superstition which pretends to be scientific creates a much greater confusion of thought than one which contents itself with simple popular practices"

Johan Huizinga, Historian

"The second fundamental feature of culture is that all culture has an element of striving"

Johan Huizinga, Historian

"Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?"

Johan Huizinga, Historian

"There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In politics, shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced, but even more in the new ideas they express"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

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

Henry B. Adams, Historian

"The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin"

Henry B. Adams, Historian

"The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies"

Henry B. Adams, Historian

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