American Heroes Quotes

“The only way to make a library safe is to lock people out of it. As long as they are allowed to read the books 'any old time they have a mind to,' libraries will remain the nurseries of heresy and independence of thought. They will, in fact, preserve that freedom which is a far more important part of our lives than any ideology or orthodoxy, the freedom that dissolves orthodoxies and inspires solutions to the ever-changing challenges of the future. I hope that your library and mine will continue in this way to be dangerous for many years to come.”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

“...a man who values his historical reputation had better outlive his enemies.”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

“This diatribe was not mere youthful exuberance. In one of his last tracts, written when he was fifty-four, he described his opponent as a "snake-in-the-grass" and then specified what kind, a rattlesnake."
(William Penn)”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

“Many of the persons convicted at Salem were found to have dolls in their possession, a piece of circumstantial evidence that in itself was almost sufficient to convict them. But there were other ways if determining whether a person was a witch or not.
Witches were thought to have witch-marks on some part of their bodies, an area of skin that was red or blue or in some way different from the rest. Furthermore, at some time during a twenty-four-hour period, it was thought, the devil or one of his imps would visit the witch and be visible to observers. He might come in the shape of a man or a woman or a child, or a cat, dog, rat, toad--indeed, any kind of creature. The devil could take nearly any shape he chose. So the usual procedure against a person accused of witchcraft was to search his or her belongings for dolls, search his or her body for witch-marks, and then keep watch over the person in the middle of the room for twenty-four hours. God help anyone who had an old doll in his possession and in addition had some skin blemish.”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America

“Libraries are the great hothouses of change, where new ideas are nursed into being and then turned loose to do their work.”
― Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America