Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

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

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer.

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

With honesty of purpose, balance, a respect for tradition, courage, and, above all, a philosophy of life, any young person who embraces the historical profession will find it rich in rewards and durable in satisfaction.

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.

Yet enthusiasm is no excuse for the historian going off balance. He should remind the reader that outcomes were neither inevitable nor foreordained, but subject to a thousand changes and chances.

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses.

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.

Throughout this evolution from left to right, Beard always detested war. Hence his writings were slanted to show that the military side of history was insignificant or a mere reflection of economic forces.

Courses on historical methodology are not worth the time that they take up. I shall never give one myself, and I have observed that many of my colleagues who do give such courses refrain from exemplifying their methods by writing anything.

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.

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.

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.

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

Sure I think it is healthy to speak the truth, and be who you are, and be proud of that.

The Republicans claim they are for strengthening Pell grants when the truth is that over the last four years, their legislation has done the exact opposite.

It's a lot easier to tell the truth usually.

A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense.

There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth.

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

Christians must be Jews. The truth of what we believe depends on the truth of Judaism, depends on the first covenant.

Beauty, like truth, is relative to the time when one lives and to the individual who can grasp it. The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired.

Once to every person and nation come the moment to decide. In the conflict of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.

The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.

There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

To the scientist there is the joy in pursuing truth which nearly counteracts the depressing revelations of truth.

The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.

This nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle - among others - that honest men may honestly disagree; that if they all say what they think, a majority of the people will be able to distinguish truth from error.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

The truth is more important than the facts.

What motivates me in art is the ugly and beautiful nature of the truth. It has to be truthful and honest, even if it is ugly and grotesque.

The truth is, it's not a great career move to create a readership and then, in effect, abandon them.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money.

Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.

Truth is the glue that holds government together.

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.