Edmund Morgan quote: "The Puritans left behind so full a record of what they thought and did that scholars cannot resist the temptation to make the most of it."

Most historians don't much like generalizations. Indeed, they make a trade of showing that this ...
EDMUND MORGAN

Both European and American historians have done away with any conceptual limits on what in the past ...
EDMUND MORGAN

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Madison wrote not only the United States Constituti...
EDMUND MORGAN

The first English settlers of North America knew they were making history. New Englanders in particu...
EDMUND MORGAN

Between 1776 and 1789, Americans replaced a government over them with a government under them. They ...
EDMUND MORGAN

Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchan...
EDMUND MORGAN

The musket could not be aimed except in a general direction; a bow in the hands of a skilled archer ...
EDMUND MORGAN

It is hard for anyone who discovers George Washington not to write about him, perhaps because he is ...
EDMUND MORGAN

Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson s...
EDMUND MORGAN

Vox populi vox dei: the voice of the people is the voice of God. The slogan was useful for those who...
EDMUND MORGAN

In America, we may acknowledge Washington and Lincoln as great men, and probably Franklin and Jeffer...
EDMUND MORGAN

No one escapes from the past without bearing some of its burdens.
EDMUND MORGAN

Thomas Paine, so celebrated and so despised as he traveled through the critical events of his time, ...
EDMUND MORGAN

The men who founded and governed Massachusetts and Connecticut took themselves so seriously that the...
EDMUND MORGAN

The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did no...
EDMUND MORGAN

To make a successful film from a successful play is probably much more difficult than making one fro...
EDMUND MORGAN

By 1892, enlightenment had progressed to the point where the Salem trials were simply an embarrassin...
EDMUND MORGAN

When Landon Carter, a Virginia plantation owner, read the Declaration of Independence two days after...
EDMUND MORGAN

The famous convention of 1787 met in Philadelphia to define the additional powers needed to enable C...
EDMUND MORGAN

The three hundredth anniversary of the Salem witch trials of 1692 comes at a time when witchcraft co...
EDMUND MORGAN

Why consider debates in the English House of Commons in 1628 along with documents on American develo...
EDMUND MORGAN

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the Ark of the Covena...
EDMUND MORGAN

In 1595, by order of the Privy Council, the English armed services abandoned the longbow and fought ...
EDMUND MORGAN

In 1787, many Americans were convinced that the 'perpetual union' they had created in winnin...
EDMUND MORGAN

The musket, always a muzzleloader, took minutes to reload; an archer could aim and fire up to a doze...
EDMUND MORGAN

What was the American Revolution? The people who joined to carry it out had different views of what ...
EDMUND MORGAN

The American Revolution was carried out in the name of the people, and it was supposedly 'We, th...
EDMUND MORGAN

Washington presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and is often credited with its success....
EDMUND MORGAN

Cotton Mather is one of those classic figures of American history who can't be left out. One has...
EDMUND MORGAN

Liberty had many friends in the eighteenth century.
EDMUND MORGAN

The preoccupation of American historical and literary scholars with the New England Puritans must se...
EDMUND MORGAN

Apart from the intrinsic interest of the complex system of beliefs the Puritans carried with them, t...
EDMUND MORGAN

In France, where Franklin had lived from 1776 to 1785, he had won an extraordinary place in the publ...
EDMUND MORGAN

There is something about guns that inhibits understanding. It is not just that they can put an end t...
EDMUND MORGAN

History, at its best, always tells us as much indirectly about ourselves as it does directly about o...
EDMUND MORGAN

The men and women who occupied the east coast of North America between 1607 and 1800 have been more ...
EDMUND MORGAN

The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to dete...
EDMUND MORGAN

The starting point for the new history, both in Europe and America, has been the record of births, m...
EDMUND MORGAN

Franklin was the best known of the Founding Fathers. His death could not go without some sort of off...
EDMUND MORGAN

Throughout his long career, Washington earned the adulation not merely of ordinary people but of the...
EDMUND MORGAN

Cotton Mather's publications in his own lifetime amounted to more than 400 titles, and his magnu...
EDMUND MORGAN

The most important of all revolutions, a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions.
EDMUND BURKE

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
EDMUND BURKE

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; fo...
EDMUND BURKE

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
EDMUND BURKE

Many people have been getting too casual about climbing Everest. I forecast a disaster many times.
EDMUND HILLARY

Vexed sailors cursed the rain, for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.
EDMUND WALLER

I'm sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useles...
EDMUND HILLARY

A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the pe...
EDMUND BARTON

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny ...
EDMUND HILLARY

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for ...
EDMUND HILLARY

Ambition can creep as well as soar.
EDMUND BURKE

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.
EDMUND BURKE

Most of the big banks were shot through with short-termism, deceptive practices and self-dealing. We...
EDMUND PHELPS

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under ...
EDMUND BURKE

But Justice, though her dome doom she doe prolong,Yet at the last she will her owne cause right.
EDMUND SPENSER

I am not quite a poet but I am something of the kind.
EDMUND WILSON

The product of the scientific imagination is a new vision of relations - like that of artistic imagi...
EDMUND WILSON

The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society.
EDMUND WILSON

All Hollywood corrupts; and absolute Hollywood corrupts absolutely.
EDMUND WILSON

His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship...
EDMUND WILSON

Real genius of moral insight is a motor which will start any engine.
EDMUND WILSON

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals.
EDMUND WILSON

No two persons ever read the same book.
EDMUND WILSON

If I could only remember that the days were, not bricks to be laid row on row, to be built into a so...
EDMUND WILSON

If you're a beach person or a golfer, Key West is not for you. Most of the sand has been importe...
EDMUND WHITE

I can remember in the late 1980s and early 1990s how many men with AIDS I saw everywhere in Key West...
EDMUND WHITE

If I had been straight, I would have been an entirely different person. I would never have turned to...
EDMUND WHITE

Paradoxically, since gay men rarely have gay parents, cultural transmission must come from friends o...
EDMUND WHITE

Europeans forget that one-third of the American people have had a personal conversation with Jesus C...
EDMUND WHITE

Looking back, I can see that the women I loved, at least early on, were status symbols. I suppose, i...
EDMUND WHITE

Whereas fiction is a continual discovery of what one wants to say, what one feels, what one means, a...
EDMUND WHITE

Barack Obama's decision to come out in favour of gay marriage may be a historic occasion, but it...
EDMUND WHITE

I'm an atheist, I always thought, 'This is it.' If there is going to be a heaven, it sho...
EDMUND WHITE

In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.
EDMUND WHITE

New York has been the subject of thousands of books. Every immigrant group has had its saga as has e...
EDMUND WHITE

Women and gay men have something in common after all: in that they are trying to deal with this goof...
EDMUND WHITE

In a novel, I think you have a contract with the reader to make the character representative - of a ...
EDMUND WHITE

There ought to be more grants that go to people in their late twenties and early thirties. That'...
EDMUND WHITE

The Stonewall riots were a key moment for gay people. Throughout modern history, gays had thought of...
EDMUND WHITE

Key West is the place where your sickly house plant back in New York grows to 10 ft. It's also t...
EDMUND WHITE

In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys,...
EDMUND WHITE

I do probably come down a little hard on a group of people I call the 'blue chip gays.' I me...
EDMUND WHITE

Originally, I was against gay marriage because I was opposed to all marriage, being an old-fashioned...
EDMUND WHITE

When I was young, I despised old people. I was provincial and narrow-minded. It's the reason I s...
EDMUND WHITE

I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique.
EDMUND WHITE

Poets that lasting marble seek Must come in Latin or in Greek.
EDMUND WALLER

His love at once and dread instruct our thought; As man He suffer'd and as God He taught.
EDMUND WALLER

So must the writer, whose productions should Take with the vulgar, be of vulgar mould.
EDMUND WALLER

A narrow compass! and yet there Dwelt all that 's good, and all that 's fair; Give me but wh...
EDMUND WALLER

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.
EDMUND WALLER

Others may use the ocean as their road; Only the English make it their abode.
EDMUND WALLER

Give us enough but with a sparing hand.
EDMUND WALLER

Circle are praised, not that abound, In largeness, but the exactly round.
EDMUND WALLER

How small a part of time they share, That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
EDMUND WALLER

Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me That now she knows, When I resemble her to the...
EDMUND WALLER

And as pale sickness does invade, Your frailer part, the breaches made, In that fair lodging still m...
EDMUND WALLER

Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, That stand upon the threshold of the new.
EDMUND WALLER

Stronger by weakness, wiser men become.
EDMUND WALLER

Illustrious acts high raptures do infuse, And every conqueror creates a muse.
EDMUND WALLER

All human things Of dearest value hang on slender strings.
EDMUND WALLER

The lark that shuns on lofty boughs to build, Her humble nest, lies silent in the field.
EDMUND WALLER

To love is to believe, to hope, to know; Tis an essay, a taste of Heaven below!
EDMUND WALLER

Could we forbear dispute, and practise love, We should agree as angels do above.
EDMUND WALLER

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; So calm are we when passions are no more!
EDMUND WALLER

Tea does our fancy aid, Repress those vapours which the head invade, And keeps that palace of the so...
EDMUND WALLER

He that strives to touch the starts, oft stumbles at a straw.
EDMUND SPENSER

I was promised on a time - to have reason for my rhyme; From that time unto this season, I received ...
EDMUND SPENSER

Gold all is not that doth golden seem.
EDMUND SPENSER

What more felicity can fall to creature, than to enjoy delight with liberty?
EDMUND SPENSER

Each goodly thing is hardest to begin.
EDMUND SPENSER

And all for love, and nothing for reward.
EDMUND SPENSER

The poets' scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by ...
EDMUND SPENSER

And he that strives to touch the stars, Oft stumbles at a straw.
EDMUND SPENSER

It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
EDMUND SPENSER

I'm hoping that the administration and other thought leaders will succeed eventually in bringing...
EDMUND PHELPS

Economists of a classical bent lay a large part of the decline of employment, and thus lagging outpu...
EDMUND PHELPS

Unemployment determination in a modern economy was the main subject area of my research from the mid...
EDMUND PHELPS

The best part of the high school in Hastings must have been the Music Department. Its orchestra and ...
EDMUND PHELPS

In societies where one sees a higher prevalence of 'modern values' - individualism, vitalism...
EDMUND PHELPS

I started to think about what drives innovation and what its social significance might be. The next ...
EDMUND PHELPS

The good life, as it is popularly conceived, typically involves acquiring mastery in one's work,...
EDMUND PHELPS

The 1920s and 1930s were a period of sensational productivity growth: new products were springing up...
EDMUND PHELPS

What brought mass innovation to a nation was not scientific advances - its own or others' - but ...
EDMUND PHELPS

Some economists believe that the Greeks' work ethic and thrift can pull them through. But the cl...
EDMUND PHELPS

In America, black urban teenagers have long been lacking in inclusion. In France, there is a compara...
EDMUND PHELPS

I'm old enough to remember in the 1930s and the 1940s when thrift, frugality, was considered an ...
EDMUND PHELPS

I didn't do my work for money or prizes - only for the excitement of discovery.
EDMUND PHELPS

I just think that the Europeans are depriving themselves of a high-employment economy, and they are ...
EDMUND PHELPS

At the simplest level, economics can better show us the consequences of our actions. Less simple are...
EDMUND PHELPS

An indictment of entitlements has to focus on the huge 'social wealth' that the welfare stat...
EDMUND PHELPS

Capitalist systems function less well without state protection of investors, lenders, and companies ...
EDMUND PHELPS

Without being aware, I think I was being indoctrinated into what was called Vitalism, the idea that ...
EDMUND PHELPS

When the word 'morality' comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and fina...
EDMUND PHELPS

My thinking has always been that the worst problem we have with regard to lack of inclusion is the t...
EDMUND PHELPS

Corporatist attitudes against capitalism came to the fore in the 1920s. Corporatists, with their con...
EDMUND PHELPS

Expertise and judgment in the art of lending for novel ventures must be reacquired.
EDMUND PHELPS

Men do not have to cook their food; they do so for symbolic reasons to show they are men and not bea...
EDMUND LEACH

The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barriers between ...
EDMUND LEACH

Far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets...
EDMUND LEACH

Something similar is still true of the courses followed by manifold intuitions which together make u...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Without troublesome work, no one can have any concrete, full idea of what pure mathematical research...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objec...
EDMUND HUSSERL

What is thematically posited is only what is given, by pure reflection, with all its immanent essent...
EDMUND HUSSERL

If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reali...
EDMUND HUSSERL

To every object there correspond an ideally closed system of truths that are true of it and, on the ...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of st...
EDMUND HUSSERL

In all the areas within which the spiritual life of humanity is at work, the historical epoch wherei...
EDMUND HUSSERL

We would be in a nasty position indeed if empirical science were the only kind of science possible.
EDMUND HUSSERL

Natural objects, for example, must be experienced before any theorizing about them can occur.
EDMUND HUSSERL

To begin with, we put the proposition: pure phenomenology is the science of pure consciousness.
EDMUND HUSSERL

It just is nothing foreign to consciousness at all that could present itself to consciousness throug...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Pure phenomenology claims to be the science of pure phenomena. This concept of the phenomenon, which...
EDMUND HUSSERL

At the lowest cognitive level, they are processes of experiencing, or, to speak more generally, proc...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Within this widest concept of object, and specifically within the concept of individual object, Obje...
EDMUND HUSSERL

Experience by itself is not science.
EDMUND HUSSERL

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.
EDMUND HILLARY

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worke...
EDMUND HILLARY

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.
EDMUND HILLARY

I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there'...
EDMUND HILLARY

I think that a good mountaineer is usually a sensible mountaineer.
EDMUND HILLARY

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevas...
EDMUND HILLARY

The truth is, I'm just a rough old New Zealander who has enjoyed many challenges in his life.
EDMUND HILLARY

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be ta...
EDMUND HILLARY

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.
EDMUND HILLARY

Life's a bit like mountaineering - never look down.
EDMUND HILLARY

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.
EDMUND HILLARY

I have never regarded myself as a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.
EDMUND HILLARY

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.
EDMUND HILLARY

There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all fea...
EDMUND HILLARY

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this moun...
EDMUND HILLARY

I say further that our system of education should be unsectarian.
EDMUND BARTON

The difference between the denominational system and the public school system is all the difference ...
EDMUND BARTON

Creating a nation requires the will of the people!
EDMUND BARTON

If it is the duty of the State to educate, it is the duty of the State also to bear the burden of ed...
EDMUND BARTON

It is the duty of the State to educate, and the right of the people to demand education.
EDMUND BARTON

She is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.
EDMUND BURKE

My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.
EDMUND BURKE

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
EDMUND BURKE

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; ...
EDMUND BURKE

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up a...
EDMUND BURKE

But the religion most prevalent in our northern colonies is a refinement on the principle of resist...
EDMUND BURKE

What shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart.
EDMUND BURKE

The fear of Hell, or aiming to be blest, Savors too much of private interest. This moved not Moses...
EDMUND WALLER

The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er; So calm are we when passions are no more!
EDMUND WALLER

The balance of power.
EDMUND BURKE

Of this stamp is the cant of, not men, but measures.
EDMUND BURKE

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the re...
EDMUND BURKE

I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people.
EDMUND BURKE

There was an ancient Roman lawyer, of great fame in the history of Roman jurisprudence, whom they c...
EDMUND BURKE

The nerve that never relaxes, the eye that never blanches, the thought that never wanders, the purp...
EDMUND BURKE

Things can get only so bad. People want to eat, so at some point they resist further cuts to their c...
EDMUND PHELPS

I am, I must confess, suspicious of those who denounce others for having too much sex. At what point...
EDMUND WHITE

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free. If our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.
EDMUND BURKE

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in a...
EDMUND BURKE

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting...
EDMUND MORRISON

It is the mind that maketh good of ill, that maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor.
EDMUND SPENSER

Who will not mercie unto others show, How can he mercie ever hope to have?
EDMUND SPENSER

Virtue may be cheerful without forgetting its dignity.
EDMUND SPENSER

It is an honourable thing to be merciful to the vanquished.
EDMUND SPENSER

The Puritans left behind so full a record of what they thought and did that scholars cannot resist the temptation to make the most of it.

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Edmund Morgan

The Puritans left behind so full a record of what they thought and did that scholars cannot resist the temptation to make the most of it.

Edmund Morgan

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