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

Categorized in : Peace Flower Stars

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

struggle life father

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

united-states democracy people

When its dark enough you can see the stars.

Charles A. Beard

encouraging positive inspirational

The two great tests of character are wealth and poverty.

Charles A. Beard

tests character two

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

Charles A. Beard

earning men

Killing time is not murder, it is suicide.

Charles A. Beard

murder killing suicide

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

democracy political government

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

taken war america

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

humanity challenges men

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

psychology civilization directors

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

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

Charles A. Beard

grind mad firsts

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

Charles A. Beard

irish-proverbs mills grind

Perpetual war for perpetual peace.

Charles A. Beard

revisionism libertarian war

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

new-york morning men

The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.

Charles A. Beard

grind flower bees

I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid 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

The Industrial Revolution has two phases: one material, the other social; one concerning the making of things, the other concerning the making of men.

Charles A. Beard

industrial-revolution revolution men

American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life.

Charles A. Beard

equality experience government life

Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.

Charles A. Beard

great temper fighting men