Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

For the truth is that men do not desire to be the Common Man any more than they are the Common Man. They need greatness in others and the occasion to discover the greatness in themselves.

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.

somewhere about the eighteenth century, history tacitly replaced religion as the school of public morals.

A nation does not create the historians it deserves; the historians are far more likely to create the nation.

Good writing is almost the concomitant of good history. Literature and history were joined long since by the powers which shaped the human brain; we cannot put them asunder.

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