He is the kind of person I should expect to rescue one from a mad dog at any risk but then insist on a stoical indifference to the fright afterward.” Jefferson Davis’s future wife describing...

I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.

Right now I’m thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It’s a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy – and it...

On Lee as commander: “He had a cheerful dignity and could praise them (his men) without seeming to court their favor.

I think that everything you do helps you to write if you’re a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don’t experience either one of those, you’re...

We have more to fear from the opinions of our friends than the bayonets of our enemies.” Politician turned Union General Nathaniel Banks, in plea he couldn’t abandon an untenable position.

I can’t begin to tell you the things I discovered while I was looking for something else.

Grant was something rare in that or any war. He could learn from experience.

A visitor asked Lincoln what good news he could take home from an audience with the august executive. The president spun a story about a machine that baffled a chess champion by beating him thrice....