Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.
Interpretation
Intellectual honesty is crucial for historians in free societies, but it is often not fully achieved.
In a free society, historians are expected to exhibit intellectual honesty, meaning they should present facts and truths without bias or deception. However, Morison suggests that while this expectation is prevalent, the fulfillment of such honesty is rare, highlighting a gap between public expectation and actual practice in historical scholarship.
In practice
In a lecture about the importance of ethics in historical writing.
But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period-Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States-are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao.
The freedmen were not really free in 1865, nor are most of their descendants really free in 1965. Slavery was but one aspect of a race and color problem that is still far from solution here, or anywhere. In America particularly, the grapes of wrath have not yet yielded all their bitter vintage.
So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out.
No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power.
Dream dreams and write them aye, but live them first.
A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race [the Yankees]; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion. . . . A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world.
There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops...when she is beginning to hate her used body, she suddenly finds that she can do it. She can go on living.
Don't be afraid of mistakes - There are none.
If you are situated at a great distance from the enemy, and the strength of the two armies is equal, it is not easy to provoke a battle, and fighting will be to your disadvantage.
You must have a place to which you can go in your heart, your mind, or your house, almost every day, where you do not owe anyone and where no one owes you - a place that simply allows for the blossoming of something new and promising.
Mythology tells us that where you stumble, there your treasure is ... The world is a match for us, and weβre a match for the world. And where it seems most challenging lies the greatest invitation to find deeper and greater power in ourselves.
Sometimes being let down my a human being is the direct cause for you finding your own strength & depending only on Allah.
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