Robert M. Edsel Quotes & Sayings

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. — Robert M. Edsel

That they will be sources of inspiration illuminating the past and vivifying the present; that they will fortify the spirit on which victory depends. Despite — Robert M. Edsel

I think we got some work done, back at the start, because nobody knew us, nobody bothered us - and we had no money. — Robert M. Edsel

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 — Robert M. Edsel

General Patton, upon seeing the Roman ruins at Agrigento, remarked to a local expert, "Seventh Army didn't cause that destruction, did it, sir?" The man replied, "No sir, that happened in the last war." "What war was that?" "The Second Punic War."5 — Robert M. Edsel

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. — Robert M. Edsel

War did not come like a hurricane, Rorimer realized, destroying everything in its path. It came like a tornado, touching down in patches, taking with it one life while leaving the next person unharmed. — Robert M. Edsel

There's one good thing about being in the bomb disposal unit: No superior officer is ever looking over your shoulder. — Robert M. Edsel

It is also a near-perfect summary of what happens in the void of war and how history is more often than not a messy combination of intention, courage, preparation, and chance. If — Robert M. Edsel

Winston Churchill had grasped Eisenhower's hand and told him, with tears in his eyes, I am with you to the end, and if it fails we will go down together. — Robert M. Edsel

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. — Robert M. Edsel

Colonel George A. Taylor rallied survivors with a 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. — Robert M. Edsel

believed it was better to assume the burden of leadership than to drift along in the shadows. — Robert M. Edsel

The skilled observer, not the machine, was the essence of conservation. — Robert M. Edsel

Had sold his soul, and that is something you can never repurchase at any price. — Robert M. Edsel

How could one of the most important and unbelievable moments in art history - not to mention the history of a world war - simply become a forgotten footnote? But that's exactly what happened. — Robert M. Edsel

If, in time of peace, our museums and art galleries are important to the community, in time of war they are doubly valuable. For then, when the petty and the trivial fall way and we are face to face with final and lasting values, we ... must summon to our defense all our intellectual and spiritual resources. 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 is the imperishable and dynamic expression of these aims. It is, and always has been, the visible evidence of the activity of free minds. ... — Robert M. Edsel

Writing now makes me feel as if I had lost at least one of my senses. I can't hear you or see you and I wonder if you hear me. One thing is quite sure. I love you. Yours, George. — Robert M. Edsel

Museum Work and Museum Problems" course, the first academic program specifically designed to cultivate and train men and women to become museum directors and curators. In addition to the connoisseurship of art, the "Museum Course" taught the financial and administrative aspects of running a museum, with a focus on eliciting donations. The students met regularly with major art collectors, bankers, and America's social elite, often at elegant dinners where they were required to wear formal dress and observe the social protocol of high culture. By 1941, Sachs's students had begun to fill the leadership positions of American museums, a field they would come to dominate in the postwar years. — Robert M. Edsel

There are fights that you may lose without losing your honor; what makes you lose your honor is not to fight.
-Jaques Jaujard — Robert M. Edsel

Destiny is not one push, she thought as she waited to cross a quiet street on that cold Paris evening years later, but a thousand small moments that through insight and hard work you line up in the right direction, like the magnet does the metal shavings. — Robert M. Edsel

Elderly people are like heat-seeking missiles for people who really have an interest in listening. — Robert M. Edsel

Possessed by the grasp of quality and connoisseurship, he knew and measured the worth of man's visible heritage and determined, in the midst of constant change, to preserve and enhance that heritage so that it might be visible to anyone with eyes to see."30 — Robert M. Edsel

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. — Robert M. Edsel

He had cozied up to history's worst murderers and racists, but he realized sooner than most that the new powers would be the liberators of places like Altaussee. The void of April to May 1945 was a period where past deeds could quickly be buried or mischaracterized, and today's lie could become tomorrow's truth. Those who stepped forward, Michel knew, could not only save their own necks, but become invaluable to the Allied conquerors. — Robert M. Edsel

Kirstein's realization came sometime later, although he could never say exactly where or when. There is not one type of German, went the thought. There were many who were never Nazis, but remained silent out of fear. Nor is there one type of Nazi. There are those who went along to survive, or for career advancement, or out of a sheepish devotion to the status quo. Then there are the hardcases, the true believers. It is possible we will find what we are looking for only when the last true believer is dead. — Robert M. Edsel

It matters little that you are afraid if you manage to hide it. You are then at the edge of courage. (one of Jaujard's philosophies) — Robert M. Edsel

George Stout saw through their acts. "I am sick of all schemers," he wrote, "of all the vain crawling toads who now edge into positions of advantage and look for selfish gain or selfish glory from all this suffering."13 — Robert M. Edsel

Fellows are just naturally interested in a good piece of work and have no unnatural restrictions in looking it over. Perhaps, and may the sahibs of the Fogg forgive me for thinking it, this simple, curious outlook of healthy men is more important than some of the monuments themselves. — Robert M. Edsel

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. — Robert M. Edsel

Finally, the man has to be able to forget himself and personal fortunes. I've relieved two seniors here because they got to worrying about "injustice," "unfairness," "prestige," and - oh, what the hell! - Supreme Commander General Dwight David Eisenhower in a letter to General Vernon Prichard, August 27, 1942 — Robert M. Edsel

When I am billeted a German home even for one night I go out and search for the chickens and rabbits or pets and give them water and food if possible. Generally the family has pulled out too rapidly to care for such things. 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. — Robert M. Edsel

That was the secret, he believed, to success in any endeavor: to be a careful, knowledgeable, and efficient observer of the world, and to act in accordance with what you saw. — Robert M. Edsel

When the Nazis took Paris, the director of the Toledo Museum of Art wrote to David Finley, director of the not yet opened National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to encourage the creation of a national plan, saying, I know [the possibility of invasion] is remote at the moment, but it was once remote in France. — Robert M. Edsel

Of all the charges which have been leveled against me," he is quoted as saying in the Nuremberg Interviews, "the so-called looting of art treasures by me has caused me the most anguish. — Robert M. Edsel

It is amazing how the world can change, he thought, during the life span of a fruitcake. — Robert M. Edsel

Forty-seven years old, tired, but none the worse for wear. In a little more than thirteen months, he had discovered, analyzed, and packed tens of thousands of pieces of artwork, including eighty truckloads from Altaussee alone. He had organized the MFAA field officers at Normandy, pushed SHAEF to expand and support the monuments effort, mentored the other Monuments Men across France and Germany, interrogated many of the important Nazi art officials, and inspected most of the Nazi repositories south of Berlin and east of the Rhine. It would be no exaggeration to guess he put 50,000 miles on his old captured VW and visited nearly every area of action in U.S. Twelfth Army Group territory. And during his entire tour of duty on the continent, he had taken exactly one and a half days off. — Robert M. Edsel

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. — Robert M. Edsel

We can use laws to prosecute and make people think twice before going to do something like blowing up Buddhas and other things. — Robert M. Edsel

The thought came back to him, as it often did: To save the culture of your allies is a small thing. To cherish the culture of your enemy, to risk your life and the life of other men to save it, to give it all back to them as soon as the battle was won ... it was unheard of, but that was exactly what Walker Hancock and the other Monuments Men intended to do. — Robert M. Edsel

Here, Mortimer Wheeler thought, is power. And a reminder of our mortality. — Robert M. Edsel

He had no idea that the world was entering an economic depression, or that hard times bring recriminations and blame. Privately, Harry's parents worried not just about the economy, but about the rising tide of nationalism and anti- Semitism. — Robert M. Edsel

They are expressions of faith, and they stand for man's struggle to relate himself to his past and to his God. With — Robert M. Edsel

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 — Robert M. Edsel