Quote

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Age: 89 †
Born: 1917
Born: October 15
Died: 2007
Died: February 28
Historian
University Teacher
Columbus
Ohio
Arthur Schlesinger Jr
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Everything
Room
Rarely
Matter
Rooms
Survive
Must
Learning
Begins
Mind
Vision
Management
Things
Moral
Matters
Life
Knowledge
Conscience
Confronting
Individual
Intellectual
Committees
Ideas
Courage
Produced

More quotes by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

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The very discovery of the New world was the by-product of a dietary quest.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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For history is to the nation as memory is to the individual.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Man generally is entangled in insoluble problems history is consequently a tragedy in which we are all involved, whose keynote is anxiety and frustration, not progress and fulfilment.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Science and Technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.
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There is far less to the Presidency, in terms of essential activity, than meets the eye.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Politics in a democracy is, at the end, an educational process.
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Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing to name a fast day, he feared to 'disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.'
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I don't think I have made as much of my life as I should have. I should have written more books.
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History is full of surprises.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and stimulated the hope of instant results.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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What we need is a rebirth of satire, of dissent, of irreverence, of an uncompromising insistence that phoniness is phony and platitudes are platitudinous.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them to rise.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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It is useful to remember that history is to the nation as memory is to the individual. As a person deprived of memory becomes disorientated and lost, not knowing where they have been or where they are going , so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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The basic human rights documents-the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man-were written by political, not by religious, leaders.
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In Defense of the World Order . . . U.S. soldiers would have to kill and die.
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Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconsciousness with habits and values.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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History is, indeed, an argument without end.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.