Quotes by G. M. Trevelyan

“One half who graduate from college never read another book.”

“A little man often cast a long shadow.”

“The best job goes to the person who can get it done without passing the buck or coming back with excuses.”

“Socrates gave no diplomas or degrees, and would have subjected any disciple who demanded one to a disconcerting catechism on the nature of true knowledge.”

“If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants, their chateaux would never have been burnt.”

“Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading, an easy prey to sensations and cheap appeals.”

“Village cricket spread fast through the land.”

“I have two doctors - my left leg and my right leg”

“God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages.”

“One reason God created time was so that there would be a place to bury the failures of the past.”

The poetry of history lies in the quasi-miraculous fact that once, on this earth, once, on this familiar spot of ground, walked other men and women, as actual as we are today, thinking their own thoughts, swayed by their own passions, but now all gone, one generation vanishing into another, gone as utterly as we ourselves shall shortly be gone, like ghosts at cockcrow.

Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.

One half who graduate from college never read another book.

Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.

Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.