Stephen Ambrose Quotes
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Immigrants do more than help us win our wars, or set up cleaning shops or ethnic restaurants.
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There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.
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You don't hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.
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My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.
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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.
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I thought Nixon was the worst President we had ever had, save only perhaps Andrew Johnson.
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The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.
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Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.
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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.
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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.
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Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions.
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To be a slaveholder meant one had to regard the African American as inferior in every way.
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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?
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I was too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam.
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Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands.
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The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.
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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.
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Crazy Horse saw history as integrated in the present, incorporated into daily life.
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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.
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The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
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We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today.
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History is everything that has ever happened.
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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.
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World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.