the independence of the artist is one of the great safeguards of the freedom of the human spirit.

The individual - stupendous and beautiful paradox - is at once infinitesimal dust and the cause of all things.

The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.

the independence of the artist is one of the great safeguards of the freedom of the human spirit.

It should be the historian's business not to belittle but to illuminate the greatness of man's spirit.

History being the record of human action is a richly variegated material, and it is not easy to give a true impression of the stuff by snipping off an inch or two for a pattern.

Without passion there might be no errors, but without passion there would certainly be no history.