A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
The construction of Europe is an art. It is the art of the possible.
Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
History is a tool used by politicians to justify their intentions.
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.
History never looks like history when you are living through it.
With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.
History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.
Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation’s history and the world’s future.
History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
A truly American sentiment recognizes the dignity of labor and the fact that honor lies in honest toil.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
Something as curious as the monarchy won’t survive unless you take account of people’s attitudes. After all, if people don’t want it, they won’t have it.
Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.
The Supreme Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including our own.
