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The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.

Stephen Ambrose

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Stephen Ambrose
Age: 66 †
Born: 1936
Born: January 10
Died: 2002
Died: October 13
Biographer
Essayist
Historian
University Teacher
Decatur
Illinois
Stephen Edward Ambrose
Constitution
Greatest
American
Words
Shortest
Document
Governing
Documents

More quotes by Stephen Ambrose

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I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.
Stephen Ambrose
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I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.
Stephen Ambrose
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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
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World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.
Stephen Ambrose
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Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.
Stephen Ambrose
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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
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I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.
Stephen Ambrose
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The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.
Stephen Ambrose
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My first book was the book that changed my life.
Stephen Ambrose
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Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.
Stephen Ambrose
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I think it's just that the private lives of our public leaders are so much more exposed today that if you're sensitive to protecting your family, it's much harder to not get defensive when somebody asks you those really rude questions about what your wife and your children are thinking and feeling at that exact moment.
Stephen Ambrose
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Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends.
Stephen Ambrose
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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
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There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
Stephen Ambrose
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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
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Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.
Stephen Ambrose
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Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.
Stephen Ambrose
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History is everything that has ever happened.
Stephen Ambrose
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Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.
Stephen Ambrose
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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