As you may recall Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953 thanks largely to the Korean War. Today however he is thought to have been a solidly good president a 'Near Great' even in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then.

As a historian what I trust is my ability to take a mass of information and tell a story shaped around it.

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do aided by modern technology which enables me having long since moved beyond longhand to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy like that of the historian must be unbounded and untainted by sect or party.

Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities.

Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

A good historian is timeless although he is a patriot he will never flatter his country in any respect.

Study men not historians.

You'd have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don't make movies we do.

What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences because it's not profitable and now Newt as the highest-paid historian in American history may be an encouragement to people to study history.

The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

The general consensus among historians among the ones who can handle the fact that 'Lincoln' is in fact historical fiction is that we demonstrate enormous fidelity to history and that beyond that we've actually contributed a line of thinking about Lincoln's presidency that's somewhat original.

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

Now there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

God cannot alter the past though historians can.

If Germany thanks to Hitler and his successors were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe.

To a historian libraries are food shelter and even muse.

Maya Angelou the famous African American poet historian and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

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

In any case his judgment and set of values acting alone or through his assistants determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant and what is not.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.