Quotes by Shelby Foote

“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....”

“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 i...”

“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.”

“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 him at...”

“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 b...”

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

“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'm crazy about Grant: his character, his nature, his science in fighting and everything else. But I don't like the idea that he never accepted the blame for anything, always found someone else to ...”

“I used to write sonnets and various things, and moved from there into writing prose, which, incidentally, is a lot more interesting than poetry, including the rhythms of prose.”

“Of all the passions of mankind, the love of novelty most rules the mind. In search of this, from realm to realm we roam. Our fleets come loaded with every folly home.”

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

“Longevity conquers scandal every time.”

“The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth — not a different truth: the same truth — only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different ro...”

“A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library. The library is the university.”

“Any understanding of this nation has to be based, and I mean really based, on an understanding of the Civil War. I believe that firmly. It defined us. The Revolution did what it did. Our involvemen...”

“Before the war, it was said 'the United States are' - grammatically it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war it was always 'the United States i...”

“I think what Churchill said about the Civil War was correct: It was the last great romantic war and the first horrendous modern war. It fascinates us because it is still the central event of our hi...”

“When I was a hardworking, pistol-hot writer, I was unknown. Now that I’m a tired old man, they start hollerin’ how good I am. I’m not going to analyze what that all means. I’m just determined not t...”