William Manchester > Quotes

“The sum of a million facts is not the truth.”
― William Manchester

“He was a thundering paradox of a man, noble and ignoble, inspiring and outrageous, arrogant and shy, the best of me and the worst of men, the most protean, most ridiculous, and most sublime. No more baffling, exasperating soldier ever wore a uniform. Flamboyant, imperious, and apocalyptic, he carried the plumage of a flamingo, could not acknowledge errors, and tried to cover up his mistakes with sly, childish tricks. Yet he was also endowed with great personal charm, a will of iron, and a soaring intellect. Unquestionably he was the most gifted man-at arms- this nation has produced. -William Manchester on Douglas MacArthur”
― William Manchester

“But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.”
― William Manchester

“It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.”
― William Raymond Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
― William R. Manchester, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

“There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged.”
― William Raymond Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

“A baboon in a forest is a matter of legitimate speculation; a baboon in a Zoo is an object of public curiosity; but a baboon in your wife’s bed is a cause of the gravest concern.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion 2: Winston Spencer Churchill Alone 1932-40

“I will not take by sacrifice what I can achieve by strategy.”
― William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things.”
― William R. Manchester, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

“The hero acts alone, without encouragement, relying solely on conviction and his own inner resources. Shame does not discourage him; neither does obloquy. Indifferent to approval, reputation, wealth, or love, he cherishes only his personal sense of honor, which he permits no one else to judge.[…] Guided by an inner gyroscope, he pursues his vision single-mindedly, undiscouraged by rejections, defeat, or even the prospect of imminent death.”
― William Manchester

“One strange feeling, which I remember clearly, was a powerful link with the slain, particularly those that had fallen within the past hour or two. There was so much death around that life seemed almost indecent. Some men’s uniforms were soaked with gobs of blood. The ground was sodden with it. I killed, too. ”
― William Manchester

“The present is never tidy, or certain, or reasonable, and those who try to make it so once it becomes the past succeed only in making it seem implausible.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Alone, 1932-40

“John Kennedy once remarked that “victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.”
― William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964

“His effect on men is one of interest and curiosity, not of admiration and loyalty. His power is the power of gifts, not character. Men watch him, but do not follow him.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

“Please understand that we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

“Inside his second-rate mind, one felt, a third-rate mind was struggling toward the surface.”
― William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

“Above all, beware the crowd! The crowd only feels; it has no mind of its own which can plan. The crowd is credulous, it destroys, it consumes, it hates, and it dreams—but it never builds.”
― William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

“I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.”
― William Manchester

“Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

“Research, of course, is no substitute for wisdom. The sum of a million facts is not the truth.”
― William Manchester

“A man is all the people he has been. Some recollections never die. They lie in one's subconscious, squirreled away, biding their time.”
― William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

“In many ways Churchill remained a nineteenth-century man, and by no means a common man. He fit the mold of what Henry James called in English Hours “persons for whom the private machinery of ease has been made to work with extraordinary smoothness.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm, 1940-1965

“when I call him a son of a bitch I am not using profanity, but am referring to the circumstances of his birth.”
― William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

“A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys.”
― William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880-1964

“Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.”
― William Raymond Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

“have another drink, and then I learn, for the hundredth time, that you can't drown your troubles, not the real ones, because if they are real they can swim.”
― William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War

“There was nothing green left; artillery had denuded and scarred every inch of ground. Tiny flares glowed and disappeared. Shrapnel burst with bluish white puffs. Jets of flamethrowers flickered and here and there new explosions stirred up the rubble.
While I watched, an American observation plane droned over the Japanese lines, spotting targets for the U.S. warships lying offshore. Suddenly the little plane was hit by flak and disintegrated. The carnage below continued without pause.
Here I was safe, but tomorrow I would be there. In that instant I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.”
― William Manchester

“Let me first assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
― William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

“Later he would say that writing a book “is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Visions of Glory 1874-1932

“And he despised pedants. A junior civil servant had tortuously re-worded a sentence to avoid ending with a preposition. The Prime Minister scrawled across the page, "This is nonsense up with which I will not put.”
― William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill [#1]: Visions of Glory, 1874 - 1932