James Harvey Robinson Quotations

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.

There are pastors who won't go to people's sick beds. How can people of God turn their back on the sick, poor and hungry?

In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.

Few of us take the pains to study the origin of our cherished convictions.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.

Partisanship is our great curse. We too readily assume that everything has two sides and that it is our duty to be on one or the other.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship. It is obviously not the ideas themselves that are dear to us, but our self-esteem, which is threatened.

Rationalizing is the self-exculpation which occurs when we feel ourselves, or our group, accused of misapprehension or error.

Speech gave man a unique power to lead a double life, he could say one thing and do another.

We find it hard to believe that other people's thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.

Mere lack of success does not discredit a method, for there are many things that determine and perpetuate our sanctified ways of doing things besides their success in reaching their proposed ends.

Curiosity is idle only to those who fail to realize that it may be a very rare and indispensable thing.

I am opposed to censorship. Censors are pretty sure fools. I have no confidence in the suppression of everyday facts.

There is nothing else anything like so interesting to ourselves as ourselves.

Man has long found solace in good talk to offset bad conduct.

To become historically-minded is to be grown-up.

We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but if someone tries to take them from us, we defend them with almost an illicit passion.

We continue to think of new things in old ways.

History ... may be regarded as an artificial extension and : broadening of our memories and may be used to overcome the natural bewilderment of all unfamiliar situations.

We like to continue to believe what we have been accustomed to accept as true, and the resentment aroused when doubt is cast upon any of our assumptions leads us to seek every manner of excuse for clinging to them. The result is that most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.

Each of us is great insofar as we perceive and act on the infinite possibilities which lie undiscovered and unrecognized about us.

Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.