James Bryce Quotes

#1. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.

James Bryce

#2. Life is too short for reading inferior books.

James Bryce

#3. Three-fourths of the mistakes a man makes are made because he does not really know what he thinks he knows.

James Bryce

#4. There is in the American Government ... a want of unity ... The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.

James Bryce

#5. In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity; but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid Nature ...

James Bryce

#6. Life is too short to read inferior books.

James Bryce

#7. Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.

James Bryce

#8. California, more than any other part of the Union, is a country by itself, and San Francisco a capital.

James Bryce

#9. Medicine, the only profession that labors incessantly to destroy the reason for its existence.

James Bryce

#10. The tendency everywhere in America to concentrate power and responsibility in one man is unmistakable.

James Bryce

#11. There is a hearty Puritanism in the view of human nature which pervades the instrument of 1787. It is the work of men who believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open for transgressors no door which they could possibly shut.

James Bryce

#12. The ordinary American voter does not object to mediocrity. He likes his candidate to be sensible, vigorous, and, above all, what he calls 'magnetic,' and does not value, because he sees no need for, originality or profundity, a fine culture or a wide knowledge.

James Bryce

#13. If you have enough room for your books, you don't have enough books.

James Bryce

#14. No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

James Bryce

#15. Individualism, the love of enterprise, and the pride in personal freedom, have been deemed by Americans not only as their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive possessions.

James Bryce

#16. The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.

James Bryce

#17. Communication is the key to education, understanding and peace.

James Bryce

#18. When you find that a book is poor ... waste no more time upon it.

James Bryce

#19. No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life's course by a mere accident.

James Bryce

#20. To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

James Bryce

#21. Perhaps the most typically American place in America.

James Bryce

#22. An eminent American is reported to have said to friends who wished to put him forward, 'Gentlemen, let there be no mistake. I should make a good president, but a very bad candidate.

James Bryce

#23. Why then seek to complete in a few decades what took the other nations of the world thousands of years? Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again.

James Bryce

#24. A political career brings out the basest qualities in human nature.

James Bryce

#25. The People, though we think of a great entity when we use the word, means nothing more than so many millions of individual men.

James Bryce

#26. It is accepted as an axiom by all Americans that the civil power ought to be not only neutral and impartial as between different forms of faith, but ought to leave these matters entirely on one side, regarding them no more than it regards the artistic or literary pursuits of the citizens.

James Bryce

#27. The worth of a book is to be measured by what you can carry away from it

James Bryce

#28. The national park is the best idea America ever had.

James Bryce