Stephen Ambrose Quotes

History is everything that has ever happened.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

Custer had dead heroes. Crazy Horse had only live ones.

I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.

It does you no good to see the number two or number three man in the corporation-you have to get through to number one.

American corporations hate to give away money.

Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends.

The more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our buildings and vehicles become, the more vulnerable we are.

I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.

The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.

Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had resisted, overcome his power, broken his will.

Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

Trial by jury. Live wherever you can make a living. How could a government based on such principles fail?

Writing is not the easiest way to make a living. Your work long hours, usually all by yourself. It is not a way to make money.

In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.

Dams have harmed our wildlife and made rivers less useful for recreation.

Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert.

It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.

We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today.

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.

There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.

My first book was the book that changed my life.

Who today is willing to say that Texas and California and the remainder of the Southwest would be better off if they were governed by Mexico?

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.

Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.

Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.

The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist.

Nixon regarded himself as having been cheated by life. He never got my vote.

Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.

American is the first democratic nation-state.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.

Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen.

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.

You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.

Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.