Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

All wars are popular for the first 30 days.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Honest history is the weapon of freedom.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

History is, indeed, an argument without end.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

History is full of surprises.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Brave men earn the right to shape their own destiny.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Few secret undertakings ever did any nation any good.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Excellence is the eternal quest. We achieve it by living up to our highest intellectual standards and our finest moral intuitions. In…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Problems will always torment us because all important problems are insoluble: that is why they are important. The good comes from the…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems; history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The broad liberal objective is a balanced and flexible "mixed economy," thus seeking to occupy that middle ground between capitalism and socialism…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As a person deprived of…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The military struggle may frankly be regarded for what it actually was, namely a war for independence, an armed attempt to imposethe…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The only President who clearly died of overwork was Polk, and that was a long time ago. Hoover, who worked intensely and…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression,…

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

Righteousness is easy in retrospect.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr

In Defense of the World Order . . . U.S. soldiers would have to kill and die.

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr