Charles A. Beard Quotes

• You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.

  Charles A. Beard

  Life, Father, Struggle

  67 Copy quote

• All the lessons of history in four sentences: 1) Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power; 2) The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small; 3) The bee fertilizes the flower it robs; 4) When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

  Charles A. Beard

  Peace, Stars, Flower

  "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, Readers' Digest, Volume 38, No. 226, February 1941.

  19 Copy quote

• At no time, at no place in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it.

  Charles A. Beard

  People, Democracy, United States

  America in Midpassage vol. 2 (1939). Coauthored with Mary R. Beard.

  19 Copy quote

• The two great tests of character are wealth and poverty.

  Charles A. Beard

  Character, Two, Tests

  16 Copy quote

• When its dark enough you can see the stars.

  Charles A. Beard

  Inspirational, Positive, Encouraging

  "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, Readers' Digest, Volume 38, No. 226, February 1941.

  40 Copy quote

• A man is a failure who goes through life earning nothing but money.

  Charles A. Beard

  Men, Earning

  18 Copy quote

• Killing time is not murder, it is suicide.

  Charles A. Beard

  Suicide, Murder, Killing

  10 Copy quote

• Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of the federal government by the agrarian masses led by an aristocracy of slave-owning masses.

  Charles A. Beard

  Government, Political, Democracy

  Charles A. Beard (2017). “Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy: How Hamilton's Merchant Class Lost Out to the Agrarian South”, p.9, Courier Dover Publications

  15 Copy quote

• Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.

  Charles A. Beard

  Mad, Firsts, Grind

  "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, Readers' Digest, Volume 38, No. 226, February 1941.

  12 Copy quote

• Perpetual war for perpetual peace.

  Charles A. Beard

  War, Libertarian, Revisionism

  "I am the perfect example of censorship in the United States". www.theguardian.com. March 29, 2001.

  12 Copy quote

• I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amidst the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best in our curious heritage prevail.

  Charles A. Beard

  Men, Challenges, Humanity

  15 Copy quote

• Technological civilization... rests fundamentally on power-driven machinery which transcends the physical limits of its human directors, multiplying indefinitely the capacity for the production of goods. Science in all its branches - physics, chemistry, biology, and psychology - is the servant and upholder of this system

  Charles A. Beard

  Civilization, Psychology, Directors

  14 Copy quote

• If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

  Charles A. Beard

  War, Taken, America

  15 Copy quote

• Let us put aside resolutely that great fright, tenderly and without malice, daring to be wrong in something important rather than right in some meticulous banality, fearing no evil while the mind is free to search, imagine, and conclude, inviting our countrymen to try other instruments than coercion and suppression in the effort to meet destiny with triumph, genially suspecting that no creed yet calendared in the annals of politics mirrors the doomful possibilities of infinity.

  Charles A. Beard

  Destiny, Mirrors, Evil

  "Time, Technology, and the Creative Spirit in Political Science". The American Political Science Review Volume 21, Issue 1, February 1927.

  60 Copy quote

• The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.

  Charles A. Beard

  Flower, Bees, Grind

  "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, Readers' Digest, Volume 38, No. 226, February 1941.

  7 Copy quote

• The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.

  Charles A. Beard

  Grind, Mills, Irish Proverbs

  "Condensed History Lesson" by Arthur H. Secord, Readers' Digest, Volume 38, No. 226, February 1941.

  9 Copy quote

• The borrowers of America and all the world turn to New York....It is to the quotations on the New York Stock Exchange that men of affairs from Penobscot to Honolulu turn each morning to find how beats the pulse of prosperity and enterprise.

  Charles A. Beard

  Morning, New York, Men

  7 Copy quote

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