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I was genuinely lucky to have the professors I did, many of whom took a very humanist approach in teaching history that went beyond memorizing dates and battles and all of that - basically, looking at the life of individuals throughout history, aided by fascinating primary sources.

I often wonder what I will be remembered in history for. Scholar? Military hero? Builder?

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

When I was a kid, I loved history because history to me was a big story.

History serves as a model not only of who and what we are to be, we learn what to champion and what to avoid.

Ideas shape the course of history.

I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties.

History has remembered the kings and warriors, because they destroyed; art has remembered the people, because they created.

It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.