I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

When people don't have an objective, there's much less dynamic effort, and that makes life a lot less interesting.

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

The unrecorded past is none other than our old friend, the tree in the primeval forest which fell without being heard