Top 90 Stephen E. Ambrose Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

2. “The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

3. “Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall,” the paratroopers liked to say. “He forgot to put a roof on it.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

4. “Crazy Horse called to his men, “Ho-ka hey! It is a good day to fight! It is a good day to die! Strong hearts, brave hearts, to the front! Weak hearts and cowards to the rear.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

5. “In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’ No,‘” I answered, ’but I served in a company of heroes.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

6. “When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

7. “The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

8. “We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace...”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

9. “History is everything that has ever happened.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

10. “In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

11. “In a foxhole, the past and, more important, the future do not exist. The only thing in the world that matters is the moment.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

12. “No war can be won without young men dying. Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

13. “At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

14. “It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

15. “The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

16. “Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

17. “You don’t hate history, you hate the way it was taught to you in high school.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

18. “Each man in his own way had gone through what Richard Winters experienced: a realization that doing his best was a better way of getting through the Army than hanging around with the sad excuses for soldiers they met in the recruiting depots or basic training. They wanted to make their Army time positive, a learning and maturing and challenging experience.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

19. “Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

20. “It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

21. “They knew they were going into great danger. They knew they would be doing more than their part. They resented having to sacrifice years of their youth to a war they never made. They wanted to throw baseballs, not grenades, shoot a .22 rifle, not an M-1. But having been caught up in the war, they decided to be as positive as possible in their Army careers.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

22. “Ethnic Germans also surrendered. Even veterans of the Eastern Front. Corp. Friedrich Bertenrath of the 2nd Panzer Division explained, “In Russia, I could imagine nothing but fighting to the last man. We knew that going into a prison camp in Russia meant you were dead. In Normandy, one always had in the back of his mind, ‘Well, if everything goes to hell, the Americans are human enough that the prospect of becoming their prisoner was attractive to some extent.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

23. “The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

24. “Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands made on the body – anything, that is, except letting down their buddies.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

25. “Nixon regarded himself as having been cheated by life. He never got my vote.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

26. “There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

27. “When a man was hit hard enough for evacuation, he was usually very happy, and we were happy for him – he had a ticket out to the hospital, or even a ticket home – alive. “When a man was killed – he looked ‘so peaceful.’ His suffering was over.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

28. “Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

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29. “Routine wears down vigilance.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

30. “The men were told that Currahee was an Indian word that meant “We stand alone,” which was the way these paratroopers expected to fight. It became the battle cry of the 506th.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

31. “American is the first democratic nation-state.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

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32. “Almost everything Truman did in foreign affairs I approve of.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

33. “I think that the opportunity to improve race relations in the United States has been put off temporarily.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

34. “As to the Indians, the guiding principle was, promise them anything just so long as they get out of the way.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

35. “Daddy, were you a hero?” And he answered, “No, but I served with heroes.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

36. “All that existed was precious in Crazy Horse’s religion – whatever a man did or thought was good, was wakan, so long as he obeyed his own inner voice, for that too was wakan.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

37. “Nor did the Americans find it necessary to wage a ruthless campaign. As has been mentioned previously, both sides respected.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

38. “What the Shoshones valued above all else, and depended on absolutely, was the bravery of their young men. Their childrearing system was designed to produce brave warriors. “They seldom correct their children,” Lewis wrote, “particularly the boys who soon became masters of their own acts. They give as a reason that it cows and breaks the Sperit of the boy to whip him, and that he never recovers his independence of mind after he is grown.” In.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

39. “Speirs was an officer with a reputation. Slim, fairly tall, dark hair, stern, ruggedly handsome, he cultivated the look of a leader, and acted it.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

40. “Washington’s character was rock solid. He came to stand for the new nation and its republican virtues, which was why he became our first President by unanimous choice.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

41. “We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

42. “American corporations hate to give away money.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

43. “Eisenhower had the clearest blue eyes. He would fix them on you. In my every interview with him, he would lock his eyes on to mine and keep them there.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

44. “Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

45. “How he led is no mystery. His techniques were time-honored. He knew his men. He saw to it that they had dry socks, enough food, sufficient clothing. He pushed them to but never beyond the breaking point. He got out of them more than they knew they had to give. His concern for them was that of a father for his son. He was the head of a family. He.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

46. “It is perhaps the consummate irony,” Arthur Moore writes, “that at each step up from savagery the human race has regarded the fruits of progress with a degree of misgiving and often longed against reason for a return to a simpler condition.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

47. “Discipline is what makes an army – and civilization.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

48. “I read about a number of generals and colonels who are said to have wandered about exhorting the troops to advance. That must have been very inspirational! I suspect, however, that the men were more interested and more impressed by junior officers and NCOs who were willing to lead them rather than having some general pointing out the direction in which they should go.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

49. “Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose

50. “Winters and Welsh simply walked toward the man, who took off. The Americans split the silverware between them. Forty-five years later, both men were still using the Berchtesgaden Hof’s silverware in their homes. After getting what he most wanted out of the place, Winters then.”

— Stephen E. Ambrose