Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain unless one can ... do big things.

About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes".

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance.

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain, unless one can. do big things.

Perhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something else.

[History is] the very servant of the servants of God, the drudge of all the drudges.

In the last resort, sheer insight is the greatest asset of all.

The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.

I've learned... . That being kind is more important than being right.

If you aren't polite when giving criticism you will come off as an awful person and if you aren't polite when receiving criticism you will come off as an awful person.

I can't change you and you can't change me, but together we can work to change the world.

Put something new on the table and everyone wants a piece of it.

I started graduate school in 1971, I started working at the Smithsonian in the festival in 1972. I went full-time at the Smithsonian in 1974. And I got my doctorate in 1975.

There's no such thing as an ex-junkie.

A charming woman is a busy woman.

Death's a path we're all on, son

If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.

It is a great disgrace to religion, to imagine that it is an enemy to mirth and cheerfulness, and a severe exacter of pensive looks and solemn faces.