Quotes from Robert M. Edsel

As he later explained to Monuments Man Bernie Taper over drinks in a Berlin apartment, 'There's one good things about being in the bomb disposal unit: No superior officer is ever looking over your shoulder.

How influential was Paul Sachs? Because he was short, about five foot two, he hung paintings low on the wall. When American museums rose to prominence after the war, many of the directors hung their paintings lower than their counterparts in Europe. Sachs's students had simply accepted it as the norm, and the other museums followed their lead.

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.

To be successful in the field, a Monuments officer would need not just knowledge; he would need passion, smarts, flexibility, an understanding of military culture: the way of the gun, the chain of command. In Balfour, Stout saw that mix of keen intellect, practical instincts and respect for the uniform. And it gave him confidence. Just

Today they are the symbols of the human spirit, and of the world the freedom of the human spirit made.…

To accept this work today is to assert the purpose of the people of America that the freedom of the human spirit and human mind which has produced the world's great art and all its science—shall not be utterly destroyed. —President Franklin D.

one human being judged groups of other human beings less worthy than his own. The

Nobody wants to disappoint the boss and get fired. But if the boss hasn't said this is important, it's going to die a slow death in bureaucracy and that explains a lot of the problems.