Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope, not of despair.

General knowledge may have to be slight or even amateurish knowledge, but it is none the less useful, and we discourage it at our peril.

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.

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.

We have more to learn today from the spectacle of a great man at a great moment than from any number of monographs on ancient wage levels.

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

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