I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.

Love of learning will never let you down. You can have a quest for money, you can have a quest for power, you can have a quest for fame and they are sometimes gratifying and sometimes self-destructive. The love of learning is always gratifying and never self-destructive. The more educated, the more cultivated a society becomes, better off is everybody.

Unlike the people you see in Mathew Brady's photographs from the Civil War, the men and women of the Revolution seem more like characters in a costume pageant. And it's a pageant in which the performers are all handsome as stage actors, with uniforms and dress that are always costume perfect.

Washington had performed his role to perfection. It was no enough that a leader look the part; by Washington's rules, he must know how to act it with self-command and precision.

I could not do what I do without the kindness, consideration, resourcefulness and work of librarians, particularly in public libraries... What started me writing history happened because of some curiosity that I had about some photographs I'd seen in the Library of Congress.

When you start to write, things begin to come into focus in a way they don't when you're not writing. It's a very good way to find out how much you don't know because you learn specifically what you need to know that you don't know at the moment by writing.

Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their country as much as he loved his own.