Lone Star Quotes

“As a construct, history is too often revised to match contemporary views. It has been said that each generation must rewrite history in order to understand it. The opposite is true. Moderns revise history to make it palatable, not to understand it. Those who edit “history” to popular taste each decade will never understand the past—neither the horrors nor glories of which the human race is equally capable—and for that reason, they will fail to understand themselves.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“It has been said that each generation must rewrite history in order to understand it. The opposite is true. Moderns revise history to make it palatable, not to understand it. Those who edit “history” to popular taste each decade will never understand the past—neither the horrors nor glories of which the human race is equally capable—and for that reason, they will fail to understand themselves.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“Texas was where the action was. It became a lodestar, pulling an enormous number of the men—Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and others—who were already in some way legends on the old frontier. As one historian wrote, Texas seemed to cast some sort of spell, to make men who were cold, pragmatic, and opportunist in the main, want to go and die.”
― T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“The Anglo-American historical experience was to be this: the people moved outward, on their own, and they sucked their government along behind, whether it wanted to go or not. This experience, from the first, was radically different from either the Spanish or the French.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“The Texan entrepreneur rarely owned credentials; some could hardly read or write. But they were dynamic; they were self-reliant, free men with no real use for either gentlemen or beggars, free as few men in a compressing society could still be. They did not work inside companies or with companies; they bought companies and piled them one atop the other, like the old cattle baron had once built up his range piece by piece.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“Every age has a people or a culture that believes the shortest distance between dreams and goals is a bomb, a bullet, a gas oven, or a keen Toledo sword and burning stake. Because”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“Another expedition journeyed far to the east, across the Panhandle of Texas, and contacted a party of Caddoan Indians. These were Hasinai, but the Spaniards called them Tejas, from the Caddoan Teychas, meaning “allies” or “friends.” This word was spelled “Texas” frequently in old Spanish, in which the “x” was substituted for a “j” sound, and from this mistaken tribal name the land derived its name.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“Conquerors who question themselves or their values soon cease to be conquerors, whatever else they become.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans

“Travis no longer expected rescue. He wrote, apparently, to stir his countrymen into action, that the country might be saved:   . . . I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms. I will . . . do the best I can . . . the victory will cost the enemy so dear, that it will be worse for him than defeat. I hope your honorable body will hasten reinforcements. . . . Our supply of ammunition is limited. . . . God and Texas. Victory or Death.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans