Allen C. Guelzo Quotes

Harry Truman is the worst President in history.

I write to learn the flow of history.

Historians sometimes view presidents very differently from the way the public did at the time. Sometimes they don't.

Ultimately, the appraisal of Grant's presidency rests upon posterity's view of Reconstruction.

I think in many ways president Trump views himself as someone who has the ability to overcome every obstacle and to do something that no other president has been able to do. And I think that's the way he views himself, as it relates to his legacy and how history will view him.

I think Barack Obama is gonna go down as the worst president ever, frankly. I used to say that about Jimmy Carter but I think he's gonna be surpassed.

It's actually quite common for presidents to believe that future generations will render a verdict on their presidencies that is more lasting or definitive than the judgments of their contemporaries. The reason is that although history is certainly "an argument without end" - we're still debating many age-old questions - time does help settle others.

There have been many amazing Presidents in American history, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, all of whom I greatly admire.

But no matter how many times we re-rank the presidents, in another 200 years, the top presidents will still be Washington and Lincoln and Jefferson, because they defined what a president is. They are the idea, and you can't be better than the idea.

No other President ever enjoyed the Presidency as I did.

The early commentators who put down the pre-presidential Roosevelt as an empty-headed young lightweight, all ambition and no talent, now seem comically wrong to a modern book-reading, movie-going, television-watching, legend-loving American public conditioned to think of him as one of the presidential giants on the order of Washington and Lincoln.

History is the study of the world's crime

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.

It seems to me that President Carter has earned his place as if not the worst president in history, the worst president of the 20th Century.

Some of the presidents were great and some of them weren't. I can say that, because I wasn't one of the great presidents, but I had a good time trying to be one, I can tell you that.

Look, history is interesting. I read three books on George Washington last year. And my opinion is that if they're still analyzing the first president, the 43rd president ought to be doing what he thinks is right. And eventually, historians will come and realize whether... the decisions I made made sense.

The president Donald Trump understands, we have to get unity across the world. We really have to make sure that we're doing everything we can to unify everyone against ISIS.

It is day two of the Democratic convention, and apparently they had a huge lighting problem in the convention hall today. They worked all day on it. They still couldn't get President Obama out of Bill Clinton's shadow.

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

most scientific problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic.

They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. And the [library] building becomes the symbol, the memorial to that dream.

One of the things that you learn, having been in this [President's] office for four years, is the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's. That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done.

In a thousand years time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they've said today will have a date too.

I can't claim to be disenchanted "with the current state of fiction" because I read so little of it. My reading is mostly drawn to history.

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes.