John Barton Quotes

I don't think it's good to be sentimental, so I try not to be.

Keep all your personalities out of your work. Forget and forgive.

If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.

It sounds funny, but I always try to keep an open mind about what I'm writing about. Sometimes I squeak my opinions in there, but generally I don't. I try to be objective about things that I'm writing about.

I am very sentimental, very emotional, but never in my writing; I am very tough.

You can't get emotional about your work.

I don't take anything personal.

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.

So, without being cold, you really have to try to retain the capacity to help people without becoming too emotional or allowing your own emotions to have full rein.

A journalist is supposed to present an unbiased portrait of an event, a view devoid of intimate emotions. This is impossible, of course. The framing of an image, by its very composition, represents a choice. The photographer chooses what to show and what to exclude.

There's no attempt to manipulate the audience. We made our choice at the start.

I don't lecture and I don't grind any axes. I just want to entertain.

One of your tasks is to separate the 'personal' from the 'substantive.' The two can become confused, especially if someone rubs the President wrong.

It is absolutely essential that one should be neutral and not fall in love with the hypothesis.

You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.

You have to approach something with indifference, as if you had no aesthetic emotion. The choice of readymades is always based on visual indifference and, at the same time, on the total absence of good or bad taste.

I believe that the reason why I love painting so much is that it forces one to be objective. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.

Be able to recognize when you're reading or hearing material biased to your own side.

When you are not a candidate you have greater credibility.

Being of no party, I shall offend all parties:—never mind! My words at least, are more sincere and hearty Than if I sought to sail before the wind.

They [speakers] enjoin promptitude and impartiality in deciding the various questions of order as they arise; firmness and dignity in his deportment toward the House; patience, good temper, and courtesy towards the individual Members ... the fair exhibition of every subject presented for consideration. They especially require of him, in those moments of agitation from which no deliberative assembly is always entirely exempt, to remain cool and unshaken amidst the storms of debate, carefully guarding the preservation of the permanent laws and rules of the House from being sacrificed to temporary passions, prejudices, or interests.

Sworn to no party, Of no sect am I; I won't keep quiet And I will not lie.

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence.

It helps to have “has beens” on commissions because they have no political ax to grind.

Politics is my second passion, but as a historian, you have to be genuinely neutral. You have failed in your primary duty as a historian if you are one side or the other.