User:EnsignWilliamDill

I was graduated from Clemson University in 1981 (the year we won the National Championship in football), with a B.S. in Adminstrative Management and again in 1992, with a M.A. in History.

Reflections on Clio's Muse:

"Strive to see and understand historical events within the context of the time periods in which they occurred. One can never be more wrong than when one tries to judge the past through the lens of the present."

"I would rather be historically accurate than politically correct!"

"I do not know when this long voyage will be ended; I am weary of seeing the shore in each successive mirage, and I often ask myself whether the terra firma we are seeking really does exist, and whether we are not doomed to rove upon the seas forever." Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, Comte de Tocqueville

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved." Helen Adams Keller

"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives." John Adams

Jakob Burckhardt, the great Swiss historian, was once asked what he thought was necessary for the study of history. "Bisogna saper leggere," he said (in Italian): "You must [first] know how to read."

"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain a child always." Marcus Tullius Cicero

The historian's task is to recontruct the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist," he said (in German): "as it really was." Leopold von Ranke

"To do what ought to be done, but what would not be done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty." The Reverend Robert Morrison, D.D.

"Education is the transmission of civilization." Will and Ariel Durant

"He is a poor pupil who does not surpass his master!" Leonardo da Vinci

"If I have seen further than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton

"The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out." Thomas Babington Macaulay

"Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less." General Robert Edward Lee

"The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe." John Walter Wayland

"Here's to our noble selves, they're damn few like us!" Elizabeth Verner Hamilton