Brigham Young Quotes

I would never lie to anyone about history.

The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?

As Members of Congress and people of conscience, we must work to overcome the indifference and distortions of history, and ensure that future generations know what happened.

I just feel that I don't agree with sensationalized versions of history or me. Any version that's sensationalized.

My books are based 98 percent on documentary evidence.

Lies are beginning to be solidified and made into historical fact…. The truth is all I want for history.

What makes a good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious. Suspicion marks the real difference between the man who wants to write honest history and the one who'd rather write a good story.

Posterity--the forlorn child of nineteenth century optimism--grows ever harder to conceive.

A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they'll ask one of two questions. Either they will ask: "what in God's name were they doing?" or they may look back and say: "how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?"

History is not history unless it is the truth.

I've never known, at least a modern historical instance, where the truth wasn't superior to distortion in every way.

It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.

There are lots of poster children for angst. But there aren't many poster children for cool angst. Everybody thinks it's cool if you're the bad girl. But what about the people who are really not feeling that great? Why can't I get up in front of millions of people, as a person who represents my generation, and tell them that I'm angry? Who puts these limits on what my personality should be in public?

Often the greatest act of courage is admitting that one has made a mistake...Follow your hearts. Protect one another, trust one another, because, at the end of the day, all of these people want something from you, or want you to do something for them, or be something that you are not. Your own responsibility is to one another.

My name is not 'The Best Player in Baseball.' My name is George Kenneth Griffey, Jr.

Oh devil! truth is better than much profit. I have searched over the grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other as the penalty, still I will not lie.

Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated.

The Bible's historical accuracy is a reminder that while "the heavens declare the glory of God," there's also plenty of evidence among the rubble and ruins.

Have we forgotten about the children, and thus forsaken the next generation?

The moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable...that what we take for granted may not be here for our children

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

We are honest about our methods and our mistakes. We are not perfect - it isn't possible to be perfect - but we are trying to go in the right direction and in those circumstances, it's best not to mystify what we are trying to do.

I would gladly chastise those who represent things as different from what they are. Those who steal property or make counterfeit money are punished, and those ought to be still more severely dealt with who steal away or falsify the good name of a prince.

I felt the naivete of a child in my dancing. I cherished that feeling. I had what I call a knowledgeable naivete, and it worked for me.

I want every young man who sees me to know that I'm not that different from them. I wasn't born into wealth. I wasn't born into fame. I made a lot of mistakes - but I kept at it.