Felix FRANKFURTER re: history

[UTUSN]

When I was an early teen, my heroes from history were the great Democratic figures: Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, FDR, Truman. Over a few scores of years, more rigorous history has dinged all of them, plus Pope Pius XII. I don't see them the same way entirely now, but here's this:

“Fluctuations of historic judgment are the lot of great men, and Roosevelt will not escape it … But if history has its claim, so has the present. For it has been wisely said that if the judgment of the time must be corrected by that of posterity, it is no less true that the judgment of posterity must be corrected by that of the time.”

- Felix Frankfurter