Historians From The United States

"The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already."

"The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them."

"We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies."

"Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also."

"The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians."

"The only true source of politeness is consideration."

"Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery."

"Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities and virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures."

"The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul. The soul must work its way out of prison, and, in doing so, provide itself with wings for a future journey. It is for each of us to determine whether our wings shall be those of an angel or a grub!"

"It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment."

"... there is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object."

"Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance, and the vain silent."

"It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues."

"There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it."

"Vanity is so constantly solicitous of self, that even where its own claims are not interested, it indirectly seeks the aliment which it loves, by showing how little is deserved by others."

"Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about for ever in expectation of a crumb; while Self-Esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as he goes."

"Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to award — these are the true aims and duties of criticism."

"Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy."

"... the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air."

"The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian."

"No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society."

"But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim."

"Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing."

"The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood."

"He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius."

"Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities. We gain only as we give."

"Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man's hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame."

"“The inexorable growth of [biology] continues to widen, not to close the tectonic gap between science and faith-based religion.”"

"By the 1940s, a fundamentalist subculture had formed in the United States, with a creationist scientific establishment of its own."

"“I never yet found any conservative lawyer who, at the beginning, wanted to undertake a case which might reflect discredit on him. When it turns out differently and there seems to be some publicity or honor to be had, then offers of assistance come from all over the country.”"

"Ginger titled a concluding chapter, “To the Losers Belong the Spoils,” and drew the lesson from Bryan’s “fatal error of tactics: if a person holds irrational ideas and insists that others should accept them because of their authoritative source, he should never agree to be questioned about them.”"

"By the 1960s, however, federal courts had long since stop using the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down progressive state economic regulations and instead used it to avoid repressive state social legislation."

"Darrow replied within the hour by tersely affirming his agnosticism on every point, concluding with his succinct answer as to the question of immortality: “I have been searching for proof of this all my life, with the same desire to find it that is incident to every living thing, and I have never found any evidence on the subject.”"

"Darrow’s opening introduced his main point. The antievolution statute was illegal because it established a particular religious viewpoint in the public schools."

"Darrow shortly wrote to Mencken about the examination of Bryan, “I made up my mind to show the country what an ignoramus he was and I succeeded.”"

"“We have to live in the universe science gives us. A theology that is contrary to reality must be abandoned or improved.”"

"The state law against teaching evolution and the resulting trial of John Scopes did not settle the matter in Tennessee or anywhere else. America’s adversarial legal system tends to drive parties apart rather than reconcile them, which certainly happened in this case."

"Stanford university president David Starr Jordan, an eminent evolutionary biologist who later volunteered to aid in the legal defense of John Scopes, spoke for many academics when he dismissed traditional Protestant revivalism as “simply a form of drunkenness no more worthy of respect than the drunkenness that lies in the gutter!”"

"Conservative Christians drew together across denominational lines to fight for the so-called fundamentals of their traditional faith against the perceived heresy of modernism, and in so doing gave birth to the fundamentalist movement and antievolution crusade."

"Already, the three main tactics for attacking the antievolution measure had emerged: the defense of individual freedom, an appeal to scientific authority, and a mocking ridicule of fundamentalists and biblical literalism; later, they became the three prongs of the Scopes defense."

"“The public mind is poisoned at its source when special interests take hold of educational institutions for their own propaganda.”"

"“What is the purpose of this examination?” Darrow answered honestly. “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States,” he declared, “and that is all.”"

"Creation science was nothing but religion dressed up as science, the high court decreed, and therefore was barred by the Establishment Clause from public school classrooms along with other forms of religious instruction."

"“If the Anti-Evolutionists in Tennessee were aware of the existence of any other religions than their own, they might realize that it is the very genius of religion itself to evolve from primary forms to higher forms.”"

"Behe has never developed his arguments for intelligent design in peer-reviewed scientific publications. Indeed, he doesn’t actually conduct research in the field and, along with other leaders of the intelligent-design movement, concedes that there is not as yet much affirmative scientific evidence supporting the concept of intelligent design."

"The southern people have a right to complain of the tariff in that I join them—it is a foolish as well as an unjust policy. But has a child son a right to cut his mothers [sic] throat to rip open the womb which conceived him—because his mother may have exhibited a momentary partiality for his brothers, especially when that mother shows a sense of her injustice and is endeavouring to readjust the balance of her affections. The failure of the Nullifiers will cover them with confusion and popular odium—but their success would consign them to eternal infamy and endless execration. Forgive the earnestness of my language—but this nullification is a cancer in my heart, & I believe in that of every Citizen of the U. States who finds himself absent from that dear Country. I cannot sleep for it—and I sometimes think of going home immediately—for if there should be a civil contest I should feel myself bound in honour to take my part in all its melancholy horrors[.]"

"American labor was strongest when the threat of communism was greatest. The apogee of America's welfare state, with all its limitations, was coterminous with the height of the Cold War. The dismantling of the welfare state and the labor movement, meanwhile, marched in tandem with communism's collapse."

"Early Christianity was primarily an urban movement. The original meaning of the word pagan (paganus) was "rural person," or more colloquially "country hick." It came to have religious meaning because after Christianity had triumphed in the cities, most of the rural people remained unconverted."

"Contempt is not a scholarly virtue."

"Constructive critique is a sign of the utmost intellectual respect."