Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Arthur Meier Schlesinger Jr.was an American historian, social critic, and public intellectual. The son of the influential historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. and a specialist in American history, much of Schlesinger's work explored the history of 20th-century American liberalism. In particular, his work focused on leaders such as Harry S. Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Robert F. Kennedy. In the 1952 and 1956 presidential campaigns, he was a primary speechwriter and adviser to the Democratic presidential nominee...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth15 October 1917
CountryUnited States of America
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. quotes about
Total separation of church and state was considered the best safeguard for the health of each. As [Andrew] Jackson explained, in refusing to name a fast day, he feared to 'disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the General Government.'
The great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights... not only for acquiescence in poverty, inequality, exploitation and oppression, but also for enthusiastic justifications for slavery, persecution, abandonment of small children, torture, and genocide... Moreover, religion enshrined hierarchy, authority, and inequality... It was the age of equality that brought about the disappearance of such religious appurtenances as the auto-da-fe and burning at the stake.
Every President reconstructs the Presidency to meet his own psychological needs.
Anti-intellectualism has long been the anti-Semitism of the businessman.
I trust that a graduate student some day will write a doctoral essay on the influence of the Munich analogy on the subsequent history of the twentieth century. Perhaps in the end he will conclude that the multitude of errors committed in the name of Munich may exceed the original error of 1938.
The very discovery of the New world was the by-product of a dietary quest.
People who claw their way to the top are not likely to find very much wrong with the system that enabled them to rise.
Troubles impending always seem worse than troubles surmounted, but this does not prove that they really are.
The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.
Few secret undertakings ever did any nation any good.
Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap,
The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.
Almost all important questions are important precisely because they are not susceptible to quantitative answer.
Liberalism regards all absolutes with profound skepticism, including both moral imperatives and final solutions... Insistence upon any particular solution is the mark of an ideologue...