Quotes by G. M. Trevelyan

“The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own th...”

“One half who graduate from college never read another book.”

“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”

“Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.”

“Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.”

“Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”

“The discredit to the good name of England if she drifts, however unintentionally, into a partition of the Persian State with the Russian Government, and the consequent setback to the moral element ...”

“The occupation of Tripoli appears to rest on the same basis as the occupation of other parts of North Africa by other European Powers—viz., on the law of force. Some of us wish, for the sake of our...”

“It is perhaps in the sphere of political institutions that the English have been most original in their native invention, from the time of Magna Charta downwards, or even from the time of William t...”

“In our own day classics have been dethroned without being replaced. But throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries our statesmen were so brought up that they thought of Rome as...”

“Linguistic ignorance and racial isolation are our greatest national dangers in the new era opened out by the War. We can no longer stand apart from Europe if we would. Yet we are untrained to mix w...”

“The abolition of the slave trade in 1807 was indeed the one large measure of reform that became law between the French Revolution and Castlereagh's death in 1822. It is greatly to the credit of our...”

“Instead of a little power, occasionally exercised at the expense of great unpopularity, the Monarch, by retiring from politics, acquired an immense popularity outside, and retained important influe...”

“As regards predominance in Europe, whether Germany wished it or not, she would have got it, if she had once more overrun France. And she would have overrun France as well as Belgium if England had ...”

“Dictatorship and democracy must live side by side in peace, or civilization is doomed. For this end I believe Englishmen would do well to remember that the Nazi form of government is in large measu...”

“That England and Italy should be on friendly terms is essential for the peace of the Mediterranean and of Africa. It is also essential for the peace of Europe, and therefore, in all probability, fo...”

“Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.”

“The sum total of progress associated with the Industrial Revolution has not been wholly for the good of man.”

“I read with regret that the authorities intend to remove the statue of Gordon from Trafalgar Square and send it down to Sandhurst. I hope the decision is not irrevocable. His memory is not speciall...”

“The dead were and are not. Their place knows them no more and is ours today...The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground...”