Arthur Schlesinger Quotes

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.

Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and stimulated the hope of instant results. — 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.

There is far less to the Presidency, in terms of essential activity, than meets the eye. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. — Arthur M. Schlesinger

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy
also cheap, — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

but also where the — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

History is full of surprises. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

His peroration, no doubt — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Brave men earn the right to shape their own destiny. — 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 slaughter the heretics. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Leadership ignites the circuit between the individual and the mass and thereby alters history. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

In Defense of the World Order ... U.S. soldiers would have to kill and die. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

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

People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them to rise. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Politics in a democracy is, at the end, an educational process. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Some people must dream broadly and guilelessly, if only to balance those who never dream at all. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The passion for tidiness is the historian's occupational disease. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

All wars are popular for the first 30 days. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

History is, indeed, an argument without end. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

History, in the end, becomes a form of irony. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The rising cult of ethnicity was a symptom of decreasing confidence in the American future. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

America gets the President it deserves — Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Few secret undertakings ever did any nation any good. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Righteousness is easy in retrospect. — 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.

My rule on honorary degrees has always been to have one more than Arthur Schlesinger Jr. — John Kenneth Galbraith

There is no more dangerous thing for a democracy than a foreign policy based on presidential preventive war. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The very discovery of the New world was the by-product of a dietary quest. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

for an informed judgment — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

Truman makes friends without influencing people,' noted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 'Dewey influences people without making friends. — David Pietrusza

Honest history is the weapon of freedom. — Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

I'm an idealist without illusions.
[Ca. 1953, attributed to John F. Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in 'A Thousand Days' — John F. Kennedy