Stephen Ambrose
In 2000, Stephen E. Ambrose received the National Humanities Medal, a formal recognition that came after decades of work as a historian, biographer, and writer of American popular history.
Born on January 10, 1936, in Decatur, Ambrose attended Whitewater High School before going on to study at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and later at Louisiana State University. Those years of academic formation led him toward a career as a historian, biographer, and essayist working in the English language. He became a longtime professor of history at the University of New Orleans, combining teaching with a prolific output as a writer. His role as a university teacher ran alongside his work producing many bestselling volumes of American popular history.
Ambrose was most noted for his books on World War II, a subject that drew his attention across much of his career. He also wrote biographies of two U.S. presidents — Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon — adding presidential biography to his body of work. The range of his output, from wartime narrative to presidential biography, contributed to his standing as the author of many bestselling volumes. Those books reached wide audiences and kept him productive as both a teacher and a writer across several decades of work.
Ambrose received the St. Louis Literary Award as well, a second instance of formal recognition added to the National Humanities Medal he had already been given. He died on October 13, 2002, in Bay St. Louis, at the age of sixty-six. Those two awards — the National Humanities Medal and the St. Louis Literary Award — represent the documented honors his career earned from the institutions and peers that recognized his contributions to American popular history.
Quotes by Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose's insights on:
At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful.
Friends never cheat on each other, or take advantage, or lie. Friends do not spy on one another, yet they have no secrets. Friends glory in each other's successes and are downcast by the failures. Friends minister to each other, nurse each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, stand always ready to help. Perfect friendship is rarely achieved, but at its height it is an ecstasy.
D-Day represents the greatest achievement of the american people and system in the 20th century. It was the pivot point of the 20th century. It was the day on which the decision was made as to who was going to rule in this world in the second half of the 20th century. Is it going to be Nazism, is it going to be communism, or are the democracies going to prevail?
It is through history that we learn who we are and how we got that way, why and how we changed, why the good sometimes prevailed and sometimes did not.
Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results.
Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.
In the 19th century, we devoted our best minds to exploring nature. In the 20th century, we devoted ourselves to controlling and harnessing it. In the 21st century, we must devote ourselves to restoring it.
Friendships are different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, friendship is based on love. Unlike lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike children and parents, it knows neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on a contract. So is marriage. Parents are bound by law. But friendships are freely entered into, freely given, and freely exercised....
