Quotes from Robert M. Edsel

He was a modernizer, in other words, who never forgot the importance of the individual people behind the machines. His

An expert and a precisionist makes his analysis first, he always said, then his decision.3

No age lives entirely alone; every civilisation is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past. If these things are destroyed, we have lost a part of our past, and we shall be the poorer for it.

Christmas was just another workday, just as it had been growing up in Alabama. In a good year back then, little Robert got a handkerchief and an orange. One year his father fashioned a little cart—although come to think of it that was in the spring, not at Christmastime—and the children took turns being pulled around the yard by the family goat. Then he died. His father and the goat.

No age lives entirely alone; every civilisation is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past." — British Major Ronald Balfour of the Monuments Men

They stopped briefly at an inn near the town of Altaussee, a tidy village tucked in the woods near a pristine alpine lake. Outside, trimly uniformed SS officers were offering their services to the liberators, who they were sure would soon be at war with the Soviets. No? Then the SS officers were happy to surrender, as long as they could keep their sidearms. They feared their own troops would shoot them in the back.

We must guard jealously all we have inherited from a long past, all we are capable of creating in a trying present, and all we are determined to preserve in a foreseeable future. Art

We do not want to destroy unnecessarily what men spent so much time and care and skill in making… [for] these examples of craftsmanship tell us so much about our ancestors.…

Art is the imperishable and dynamic expression of these aims. It is, and always has been, the visible evidence of the activity of free minds.…

Nations. These monuments are not merely pretty things, not merely valued signs of man's creative power. They are expressions of faith, and they stand for man's struggle to relate himself to his past and to his God.

If the Nazis discovered they could push you, they would push you to your death. You had to be too much trouble to make it easy, but not so much they grew tired of you.

It was typical George Stout: detailed, timely, and understated. Here was a man that was never hurried. Who was careful. Punctual. Precise. An expert and a precisionist makes his analysis first, he always said, then his decision.

i don't believe i've ever been more certain than I am now that the development and understanding of man's workmanship is the fundamental need of man's spirit; or that we can never look for healthy social body until that need,among others, is fed.

Colonel George A. Taylor rallied survivors with the cry, "Two kinds of people are staying on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die. Now let's get the hell out of here."1 Forty-three thousand troops were ferried across the English

More than anything, the Nazis robbed families: of their livelihoods, their opportunities, their heirlooms, their mementos, of the things that identified them and defined them as human beings.

The identity and infrastructure of the nations of Europe had to be rebuilt, and the restitution of artwork was a vital component.

fifty million loved ones who never returned home from the war to rejoin their families or start one of their own; brilliant, creative contributions never made to our world because scientists, artists, and inventors lost their lives too early or were never born; cultures built over generations reduced to ashes

There are rights that you may lose without losing your honour; what makes you lose your honour is not to fight them.

It matters little that you are afraid if you manage to hide it. You are then at the edge of courage.

I suppose the stern and the cruel ones rule the world. If so, I shall be content to try to live each day within the limits of my conscience and let great plaudits go to those who are willing to pay the price for it.

Stout was a leader—quiet, unselfish, modest, yet very strong, very thoughtful and remarkably innovative. Whether speaking or writing, he was economical with words, precise, vivid. One believed what he said; one wanted to do what he proposed." Neither

care, selected to match his personal taste. Champagne bottles weren't just opened, they were "sabered," a dramatic and theatrical process in which the force of a saber, slid along the body of the bottle toward the neck, snaps the collar from the neck of the bottle, leaving the cork intact but the bottle open.

And there's always the comfort of knowing that you're dealing with the necessities of a situation and not with the vagaries of some fool's whim.

But he had sold his soul, and that is something you can never repurchase at any price.