Historical Reputation Quotes

Whether a man is a legend or not is decided by history, not fortune tellers.

I don't know that there has ever been a time when Abraham Lincoln didn't stand head-and-shoulders above all other presidents in the historians' eye. But relatively speaking, there have been peaks and a troughs. One peak was in the 1910s-20s; a major trough was in the 1970s-80s. We are certainly on a peak again, something which began in 1994 with Michael Burlingame's 'The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln,' which showed in fabulous detail how many new and untapped sources were available on Lincoln.

No British Prime Minister of the last seventy years has been more harshly stereotyped than Stanley Baldwin. No one has been so much ignored, after the initial judgements of contemporaries had been made.

Bush does not want to go down in history as the president who lost in Iraq. His strategy to the extent he has one is to hang tough and let whoever succeeds him take the fall.

When Arthur Schlesinger Sr. pioneered the 'presidential greatness poll' in 1948, the top five were Lincoln, Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jefferson. Only Wilson appears to be seriously fading, probably because his support for the World War I-era Sedition Act now seems outrageous; in this analogy, Woodrow is like the Doors and the Sedition Act is Oliver Stone.

Truman left in the middle of an unpopular war, a war of choice. Truman didn't have to go into South Korea. And he was reviled and ridiculed for the stalemate that resulted. Now, he's seen as one of the great presidents of the 20th century.

I understand that Italy could have been associated with the idea of an undisciplined country in the past.

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.

Henri IV's feet and armpits enjoyed an international reputation.

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.

Harry Truman is the worst President in history.

You can make history, or you will be vilified by it.