Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Quotes - Page 2

Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue.

History, in the end, becomes a form of irony.

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease.

I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of Munich may exceed the original error of 1938.

Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In seeking excellence, take life seriously-but never yourself!

Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing to name a fast day, he feared to 'disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.'

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap.

History is full of surprises.

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man -- these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.

What higher obligation does a President have than to explain his intentions to the people and persuade them that the direction he wishes to go is right?

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.

The military struggle may frankly be regarded for what it actually was, namely a war for independence, an armed attempt to imposethe views of the revolutionists upon the British government and large sections of the colonial population at whatever cost to freedom of opinion or the sanctity of life and property.

The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.

I don't think I have made as much of my life as I should have. I should have written more books.

Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits and values.

Santayana's aphorism must be reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are condemned to repeat it.

Every President reconstructs the Presidency to meet his own psychological needs.

Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfilment.

There is far less to the Presidency, in terms of essential activity, than meets the eye.

Brave men earn the right to shape their own destiny.

The very discovery of the New world was the by-product of a dietary quest.

Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.

Few secret undertakings ever did any nation any good.

The only President who clearly died of overwork was Polk, and that was a long time ago. Hoover, who worked intensely and humorlessly as President, lived for more than thirty years after the White House; Truman, who worked intensely and gaily, lived for twenty

Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are.