Stephen Ambrose Quotations

Dams have harmed our wildlife and made rivers less useful for recreation.

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.

The more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our buildings and vehicles become, the more vulnerable we are.

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.

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.

Writing is not the easiest way to make a living. Your work long hours, usually all by yourself. It is not a way to make money.

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.

It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly.

World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.

Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had resisted, overcome his power, broken his will.

There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.

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.

Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions.

In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.

Washington's character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.

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

Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.

Who today is willing to say that Texas and California and the remainder of the Southwest would be better off if they were governed by Mexico?

The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same.

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a country for white men.

Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.

As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.

Custer had dead heroes. Crazy Horse had only live ones.

You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.

Neither Johnson nor his party nor the government as a whole were willing to raise, train, equip, and then send Vietnam sufficient manpower to do the job.

Nearly every artifact has a story connected to it, whether it be a hole in a helmet or a belt that a medic carried around with him as he treated the wounded on the beach.

It does you no good to see the number two or number three man in the corporation-you have to get through to number one.

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

We voted 50-50 for the next president, ... One of the things that was notable was how much the American people today yearn for a sense of national unity and that brought it about. So there are a lot of things that happened after 12/7/41 that are happening now and will continue to happen, the most important of which is we became one people.

The copied words they discovered amounted to about 10 pages out of a total work of some 15,000 pages in print, ... The investigative reporters found them by using my footnotes.

I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.

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.

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.

American is the first democratic nation-state.

American corporations hate to give away money.

I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.

To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.

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.

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of, even hated, big business.

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

Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress.

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.

Nixon regarded himself as having been cheated by life. He never got my vote.

To have some parts flowing free again . . . with deer grazing on its banks . . . ducks and geese raising their young in the backwaters . . . eddies and twists and turns for canoeists . . . and fishing opportunities such as Lewis and Clark enjoyed . . . would be the finest possible tribute to the men of the Expedition, and a priceless gift for our children.

We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace...

Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen.

Trial by jury. Live wherever you can make a living. How could a government based on such principles fail?

Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.

The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands.

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you have these great nation states hurling their young men at one another. The victory was really going to rest on who could do the best job of bringing up their kids to become efficient and effective soldiers. That's pretty grandiose, I guess, but I do think that, and thank God it's been the armies of democracy that have emerged from this as the triumphant armies.

We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today.

I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.

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.

Washington and Jefferson were both rich Virginia planters, but they were never friends.

Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist.

My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.

History is everything that has ever happened.

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.

Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert.

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

My first book was the book that changed my life.

Friendships are different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, friendship is based on love. Unlike lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike children and parents, it knows neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on a contract. So is marriage. Parents are bound by law. But friendships are freely entered into, freely given, and freely exercised....

In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.

Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.

Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.

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.

D-Day represents the greatest achievement of the american people and system in the 20th century. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?

Friends never cheat on each other, or take advantage, or lie. Friends do not spy on one another, yet they have no secrets. Friends glory in each other's successes and are downcast by the failures. Friends minister to each other, nurse each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, stand always ready to help. Perfect friendship is rarely achieved, but at its height it is an ecstasy.

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.

There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.