M. H. Abrams Quotes

Following graduation from Amherst, a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship enabled me to test the depth of my interest in literary scholarship by beginning graduate studies at Harvard University.

Certainly, the illiterates of past centuries, then an enormous majority of mankind, knew little of the history of their respective countries and of their civilization. In the minds of modern illiterates, however, who know how to read and write and even teach in schools and at universities, history is present but blurred, in a state of strange confusion; Molière becomes a contemporary of Napoleon, Voltaire, a contemporary of Lenin.

There is this tremendous body of knowledge in the world of academia where extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful people have taken the time to examine on a really profound level the way we live our lives and who we are and where we've been. That brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in academia and never sees the light of day.

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.

As a graduate student, I wrote a long paper connecting the dots between mathematical models of learning and language development in children. It was published in a major journal.

My real education began when I entered the University of Chicago in September 1951 as a graduate student.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

The history of mankind is the history of ideas.

We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

I did a history degree once.

Our home had many books due principally to the educational interests of my sister and two brothers, all of whom where serious students engaged in professional studies; my sister became a doctor of medicine and my brothers became lawyers.

In many ways, a degree in the history of ideas is the ideal training for an aspiring writer.

I was a history major at Princeton University; I took exams in war and diplomacy, and I find those things very fascinating.

People who spend their working hours in a lab or research library or a classroom might be intent primarily on keeping or advancing their elite positions, thereby lending tacit support to power structures. Or they might not be.

I'm not an educated man. I only know what I'm told, and I'm not told that much; I have no frame of reference for how to place things in history be a responsible leader. All I can do is be an artist.

The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind.

Since I come from an educated background, I love to study.

The difference between eccentricity and originality in historical studies is often difficult to detect at first encounter. When a radically new interpretation of a large segment of history makes its appearance, time is needed to sift the evidence.

It turns out one of my dad's best friends was Carl Sagan when I was little. They were both Harvard professors.

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.

I don't believe athletes should be role models. . . . We're a one-shot deal, one in a million, so we should be the least likely role models. . . . I think one of the problems in society today is that we don't stress education enough, because we glorify athletes, actors and actresses.

All history is the history of thought.

The study of History is the best medicine for a sick mind.