Stephen Ambrose quote: "The irony here is the man who has done the most to keep these papers from becoming available, Dick Nixon, is the man who's going to benefit the most from them because people are going to start seeing the problems from his point of view."

Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he ...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Friendships are different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, friendship is based...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies fait...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admira...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our hist...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

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

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

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

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

Neither Johnson nor his party nor the government as a whole were willing to raise, train, equip, and...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

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

The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

As a people, we have wrestled with Vietnam's legacy for many years, as was and is our duty. Now we w...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

The copied words they discovered amounted to about 10 pages out of a total work of some 15,000 pages...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

a great teacher of writing.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

You can take the day off.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

You cannot kill that city, ... I bet there's people saying, I've got to go back.'
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Nearly every artifact has a story connected to it, whether it be a hole in a helmet or a belt that a...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

We voted 50-50 for the next president, ... One of the things that was notable was how much the Ameri...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly.
STEPHEN AMBROSE

It does you no good to see the number two or number three man in the corporation-you have to get thr...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had r...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner generally who proclaimed that his native state of Tennessee was a co...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

I was taught by professors who had done their schooling in the 1930s. Most of them were scornful of,...
STEPHEN AMBROSE

Chickenshit is so called - instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit - because it is small-minded ...
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

The result of these shared experiences was a closeness unknown to all outsiders. Comrades are closer...
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'...
STEPHEN E. AMBROSE

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

When I go to Rome, I fast on Saturday, but in Milan I do not. Do you also follow the custom of whate...
SAINT AMBROSE

It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard agains...
SAINT AMBROSE

The best way to use the gold of the Redeemer is for the redemption of those in peril.
SAINT AMBROSE

Many a sin has sullied me in body and in soul because I did not restrain my thoughts nor guard my li...
SAINT AMBROSE

Nothing graces the Christian soul so much as mercy; mercy as shown chiefly towards the poor, that th...
SAINT AMBROSE

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns.
SAINT AMBROSE

In some causes silence is dangerous.
SAINT AMBROSE

God is not accustomed to refusing a good gift to those who ask for one. Since he is good, and especi...
SAINT AMBROSE

Let us take refuge from this world. You can do this in spirit, even if you are kept here in the body...
SAINT AMBROSE

It is not enough just to wish well; we must also do well.
SAINT AMBROSE

One of the duties of fortitude is to keep the weak from receiving injury; another, to check the wron...
SAINT AMBROSE

God, who preferred the correction rather than the death of a sinner, did not desire that a homicide ...
SAINT AMBROSE

God created the universe in such a manner that all in common might derive their food from it, and th...
SAINT AMBROSE

There is nothing evil save that which perverts the mind and shackles the conscience.
SAINT AMBROSE

No one is good but God alone. What is good is therefore divine, what is divine is therefore good.
SAINT AMBROSE

A kindness received should be returned with a freer hand.
SAINT AMBROSE

Where a man's heart is, there is his treasure also.
SAINT AMBROSE

When in Rome, live as the Romans do; when elsewhere, live as they live elsewhere.
SAINT AMBROSE

Belladonna, n.: In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the e...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Divorce: a resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for,...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Suffrage, noun. Expression of opinion by means of a ballot. The right of suffrage (which is held to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Laziness. Unwarranted repose of manner in a person of low degree.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Doubt is the father of invention.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Cabbage: a familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE

I always liked the guys who lasted a long time in the match and had endurance. People like Ric Flair...
DEAN AMBROSE

Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Clairvoyant, n.: A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Liberty:one of imaginations most precious possessions.
AMBROSE BIERCE

We played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in 'The Blues Brothers' w...
LAUREN AMBROSE

Quoting: the act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Success is the one unpardonable sin against our fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Optimist: a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE

WWE is like showbiz boot camp.
DEAN AMBROSE

Litigant: a person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bone.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man - who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE

OCEAN, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man -- who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE

ZEAL, n. A certain nervous disorder afflicting the young and inexperienced. A passion that goeth b...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important th...
AMBROSE REDMOON

For every man there is something in the vocabulary that would stick to him like a second skin. His e...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Education, n.: That which discloses the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understand...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
AMBROSE BIERCE

You don't have to be stupid to be a Christian, ... but it probably helps.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no g...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Fidelity. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Incompatibility. In matrimony a similarity of tastes, particularly the taste for domination.
AMBROSE BIERCE

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Marriage. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, m...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE

What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republi...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking th...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Photograph is a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. It is a little better than th...
AMBROSE PIERCE

Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Acquaintance: a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor or obscure, and intimate ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
AMBROSE BIERCE

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring! But beauty faded has no second spring.
AMBROSE PHILIPS

Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Corporation. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Philanthropist. A rich (and usually bald) old gentleman who has trained himself to grin while his co...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Education is that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understan...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pi...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad gover...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Pray: To ask the laws of the universe to be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner confessedly un...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE

To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
AMBROSE BIERCE

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE

An optimist is a proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE

They say that hens do cackle loudest when there is nothing vital in the eggs they have laid.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
AMBROSE BIERCE

As records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolen...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Before undergoing a surgical operation, arrange your temporal affairs. You may live.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Politeness -- The most acceptable hypocrisy.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A man is known by the company he organizes.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapaciti...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Enthusiasm. A distemper of youth, curable by small doses of repentance in connection with outward ap...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
AMBROSE BIERCE

An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
AMBROSE BIERCE

Duty. That which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Insurance: An ingenious modern game of chance in which the player is permitted to enjoy the comforta...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Alien. An American sovereign in his probationary state.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. Miss, Mis...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is please...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
AMBROSE BIERCE

A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Impartial. Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a cont...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is give...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscien...
AMBROSE BIERCE

A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
AMBROSE BIERCE

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.
AMBROSE BIERCE

An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
AMBROSE BIERCE

To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
AMBROSE BIERCE

An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly k...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Habit is a shackle for the free.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarti...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, ad...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly tha...
AMBROSE BIERCE

The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE

PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
AMBROSE BIERCE

When in Rome, do as Rome does.
AMBROSE BIERCE

To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Censor, n. An officer of certain governments, employed to supress the works of genius. Among the Rom...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by frie...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Irreligion. The principal one of the great faiths of the world.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things withou...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his o...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Woman absent is woman dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE

The covers of this book are too far apart.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Abscond. To move in a mysterious way, commonly with the property of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Creditor. One of a tribe of savages dwelling beyond the Financial Straits and dreaded for their deso...
AMBROSE BIERCE

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Conservative. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal, who wi...
AMBROSE BIERCE

The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
AMBROSE BIERCE

Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
AMBROSE BIERCE

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
AMBROSE BIERCE

Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
AMBROSE BIERCE

ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
AMBROSE BIERCE

The irony here is the man who has done the most to keep these papers from becoming available, Dick Nixon, is the man who's going to benefit the most from them because people are going to start seeing the problems from his point of view.

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Stephen Ambrose

The irony here is the man who has done the most to keep these papers from becoming available, Dick Nixon, is the man who's going to benefit the most from them because people are going to start seeing the problems from his point of view.

Stephen Ambrose

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