Quote

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

Stephen Ambrose

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Stephen Ambrose
Age: 66 †
Born: 1936
Born: January 10
Died: 2002
Died: October 13
Biographer
Essayist
Historian
University Teacher
Decatur
Illinois
Stephen Edward Ambrose
Numbers
Successful
Secret
Marry
Majors
Major
English
Number
Writer

More quotes by Stephen Ambrose

Image
Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
History is everything that has ever happened.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Oftentimes the fascinating thing is that people who are seen as commanding figures at the moment that they were considered for President and did not run turned out to be treated by history as much more minor figures politically.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Eisenhower is my choice as the American of the 20th Century. Of all the men I've studied and written about, he is the brightest and the best.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.
Stephen Ambrose
Image
Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.
Stephen Ambrose