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.

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.

The association promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects. Yet it is an association for as noble a purpose as any involved in any prior decisions.

Happy the man who has been able to learn the causes of things.

There is one thing higher than Royalty: and that is religion, which causes us to leave the world, and seek God.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

Having played an angel for so long, you can imagine that I've been asked to endorse any number of causes over the years. Obviously I have to limit my participation with any charity, so I decided to really concentrate on my love of children.

The final causes, then, of compassion are to prevent and to relieve misery.

I wish I had the billions of dollars that George Soros has that he has used to fund Democratic causes in the past.

It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

You may count on Mexico's support, since your commitment to the noblest causes of mankind and your vast experience are and will be invaluable in enabling us, together, to achieve a better world.

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

It was hard to figure out what were the good causes, the bad causes, even the good politics and the bad politics. So we started taking requests and figuring it out.

Waste no time with revolutions that do not remove the causes of your complaints but simply change the faces of those in charge.

To deal with the true causes of war one must begin by recognizing as of prime relevancy to the solution of the problem the familiar fact that civilization is a partial, incomplete, and, to a great extent, superficial modification of barbarism.

Evil events from evil causes spring.

Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health.

Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.

The same characters that keep reappearing, bigger than life, find their own integrity in doing what they do the way they do it, even if it causes their own deaths.

Happiness is a real, objective phenomenon, scientifically verifiable. That means people and whole societies can now be measured over time and compared accurately with one another. Causes and cures for unhappiness can be quantified.

The United Nations charter gives every nation the right to self defence, therefore when the American embassies were bombed it was a matter of time before the Americans responded by going for what they suspected were the causes of the attack.

Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the most amount of trouble.

Let us not suffer from a national amnesia that causes us to forget who and what we are.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

It is almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble.

The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion.

The working classes were becoming more and more sharply aware of the complex causes of international malaise.

The safest and most suitable form of penance seems to be that which causes pain in the flesh but does not penetrate to the bones, that is, which causes suffering but not sickness.

A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization.

The death tax causes one-third of all family-owned small businesses to liquidate after the death of the owner. It is also an unfair tax because the assets have already been taxed once at their income level.

It's important to be active in the causes that are important to you... That's how we make changes in this world.

I got a feeling about political correctness. I hate it. It causes us to lie silently instead of saying what we think.

I could never accept findings based almost exclusively on mathematics. It ain't ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. It's the things people know that ain't so.