He (Columbus) enjoyed long stretches of pure delight such as only a seaman may know, and moments of high, proud exultation that only a discoverer can experience

[President Roosevelt won international recognition, orchestrating much of the negotiations himself from afar. In retrospect, some historians such as Samuel Eliot Morison, found fault.] Between 1941 and 1945 the United States paid heavily for the long-term results of Roosevelt's meddling, for which, ironically, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, ... The Oxford History of the American People.

So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses.