Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. / 1917–2007 / Columbus, Ohio, USA / Historian, Political Activist, Public Servant, Author
American System of Government
The genius of the American system is that it gives you great flexibility to do a lot of things at once.
Interview, The Atlantic, July, 2000.
The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.
The Imperial Presidency (1973).
Our task is not to rediscover our institutions but to reinvent them.
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992).
In the United States, the health of the people is the foundation of all the powers of government.
The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957).
Democracy
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992).
Democracy, if it means anything, means a society in which power, to be legitimate, must be disciplined by the will and judgment of the governed.
The Crisis of Confidence: Ideas, Power, and Violence in America (1969).
Economics
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
The Age of Jackson (1945).
Extremism
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all.
The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949).
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (1965).
Freedom
Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure, is to betray it.
The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949).
History
History is to the nation as memory is to the individual.
The Cycles of American History (1986).
We are not the prisoners of history but its makers. We make our own history by our decisions and our actions.
The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957).
History is an antidote for despair.
The Cycles of American History (1986).
History gives us a kind of chart, and we dare not surrender even a small rushlight in the darkness.
The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957).
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992).
Language
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949).
Political Power
Power in America today is control of the means of communication.
The Politics of Hope (1963).
Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
The Imperial Presidency (1973).
In this world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and without passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all frontiers.
The Age of Jackson (1945).
I take it to be axiomatic that people are revolted by power, but they are also revolted by the absence of power.
The Imperial Presidency (1973).
Prejudice
The persistence of racial and ethnic prejudice in America indicates that discrimination is an ineradicable part of human society.
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992).
Science and Technology
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition, and myth frame our response.
The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (1992).
Science has made gods of us before we have deserved even to be men.
The Crisis of Confidence: Ideas, Power, and Violence in America (1969).
Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them.
The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957).
Welfare
The lessons of history . . . show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.
The Age of Roosevelt, Vol. I: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (1957).