Samuel Eliot Morison Quotes

If the American Revolution had produced nothing but the Declaration of Independence, it would have been worthwhile.

He [Columbus] enjoyed long stretches of pure delight such as only a seaman may know, and moments of high, proud exultation that only a discoverer can experience.

A few hints as to the craft may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing!

Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.

Dream dreams and write them aye, but live them first.

Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.

America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.

Franklin may . . . be considered one of the founding fathers of American democracy, since no democratic government can last long without conciliation and compromise.

Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as a clipper ship.

One learns more from defeat than from victory.

If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.