Gordon S. Wood said this quote

“ Much of history is fragmentary and essentially anachronistic – condemning the past for not being more like the present. It has no real interest in the pastness of the past. ”

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In monarchies, each man's desire to do what was right in his own eyes could be restrained by beer, or force, by patronage, or by honor, and by professional standing armies. By contrast, republics had to hold themselves together from the bottom up, ultimately.

~ Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood Coercion Government Law Republicanism Virtue

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.

~ Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood History Humility Storytelling

Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.

~ Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood Democracy Self Government

In the decades following the Revolution, America changed so much and so rapidly that Americans not only became used to change, but came to expected and prize it.

~ Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood Change Novelty Progress