Righteousness is easy in retrospect.

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.

Honest history is the weapon of freedom.

For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life.

History, in the end, becomes a form of irony.

Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing to name a fast day, he feared to 'disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.'

Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.