Historian Quotes: Timeless Insights and Reflections (Page 2)

"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion"

C. Northcote Parkinson, Historian

"By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed"

Sallust, Historian

"Everything that rises sets, and everything that grows, grows old"

Sallust, Historian

"Neither soldiers nor money can defend a king but only friends won by good deeds, merit, and honesty"

Sallust, Historian

"Kings are more prone to mistrust the good than the bad; and they are always afraid of the virtues of others"

Sallust, Historian

"The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers"

Lord Acton, Historian

"Property is not the sacred right. When a rich man becomes poor it is a misfortune, it is not a moral evil. When a poor man becomes destitute, it is a moral evil, teeming with consequences and injurious to society and morality"

Lord Acton, Historian

"A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times"

Lord Acton, Historian

"Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing"

G. M. Trevelyan, Historian

"A little man often cast a long shadow"

G. M. Trevelyan, Historian

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers"

Daniel J. Boorstin, Historian

"Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities"

Daniel J. Boorstin, Historian

"Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge"

Daniel J. Boorstin, Historian

"The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities"

John Acton, Historian

"Then you get to the last half of the 20th century, Americans are getting very skeptical about their leaders and their institutions, and another place that is affected is parties and conventions"

Michael Beschloss, Historian

"Liberty is the prevention of control by others"

John Acton, Historian

"You have had presidential candidates over the last 30 years who would have had a very hard time getting nominated under the old system. One example is John Kennedy"

Michael Beschloss, Historian

"Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history?"

Goldwin Smith, Historian

"The insular arrogance of the English character is a commonplace joke"

Goldwin Smith, Historian

"Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries"

John Lothrop Motley, Historian

"The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs"

John Lothrop Motley, Historian

"Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances"

Iris Chang, Historian

"The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out"

Iris Chang, Historian

"Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves"

Arrian, Historian

"Any stigma, as the old saying is, will serve to beat a dogma"

Philip Guedalla, Historian

"No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous"

Henry Adams, Historian

"You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live"

Donald Kagan, Historian

"A "good" family, it seems, is one that used to be better"

Cleveland Amory, Historian

"As history since Hiroshima shows, the best, perhaps the only, way to curb war is to deter it with such overwhelming force as to turn it from a struggle into suicide"

Martin van Creveld, Historian

"The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the republic were affected by the presence of foreigners, under different names, on her soil"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

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