Historian Quotes - Page 10

• It may be said of many palaeontologists, as Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper said recently of 18th century historians: "Their most serious error was to measure the past by the present".

  D. V. Ager

  Science, Past, Errors

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• You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

  Oliver Stone

  Book, Order, Shapes

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• No historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should merely be a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics.

  Henry Adams

  Race, History, Statistics

  The Education of Henry Adams Vis Interiae (p. 447)

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• Although some people think I am a romantic novelist I have always thought of myself as a rather gritty radical historian.

  Philippa Gregory

  Thinking, People, Novelists

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• The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

  James Henry Breasted

  Men, Firsts, Ancient

  James Henry Breasted (1933). “The Oriental Institute”

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• Sallust is indisputably one of the best historians among the Romans, both for the purity of his language and the elegance of his style.

  Edmund Burke

  Style, Language, Purity

  Edmund Burke, Arthur P.I. Samuels (2014). “The Early Life Correspondence and Writings of The Rt. Hon. Edmund Burke”, p.129, CUP Archive

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• AS an economic historian, I appreciate what manufacturing has contributed to the United States. It was the engine of growth that allowed us to win two world wars and provided millions of families with a ticket to the middle class. But public policy needs to go beyond sentiment and history.

  Christina Romer

  War, Winning, Class

  "Do Manufacturers Need Special Treatment?" by Christina Romer, www.nytimes.com. February 4, 2012.

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• The long historian of my country's woes.

  Homer

  Country, Long, History

  Homer (1872). “The Iliad ...”, p.331

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• In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.

  Randy Weston

  Past, Visions Of The Future, People

  Randy Weston, Willard Jenkins (2015). “African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston”, p.298, Duke University Press

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• The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past.

  Geoffrey Barraclough

  Past, Differences, Narrators

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• Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get to the stores. ... But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War II.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  War, Years, Class

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1989). “FEAR OF FALLING”, Pantheon

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• History is made by masses of people. One man, or ten men, don't start the earthquakes and don't stop them either. Only hero worshipers and ignorant historians think they do.

  Lillian Hellman

  Hero, Men, Thinking

  Lillian Hellman (1944). “The Searching Wind: A Play in Two Acts”, New York : The Viking Press

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• Ah, there's nothing like tea in the afternoon. When the British Empire collapses, historians will find that it had made but two invaluable contributions to civilization - this tea ritual and the detective novel.

  Ayn Rand

  Civilization, Two, Tea

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.307, Penguin

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• Fatal human malice is the staple of narrators, original sin the mother-fluid of historians. But it is a risky enterprise to have to write of virtue.

  Thomas Keneally

  Mother, Writing, Narrators

  Thomas Keneally (2013). “Schindler's List”, p.14, Simon and Schuster

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• The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

  Augustine Birrell

  Wise, Views, Style

  Augustine Birrell (1923). “The collected essays & addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920”

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• To philosopher and historian the madness and imbecile wickedness of mankind ought to appear ordinary events.

  David Hume

  Stupidity, Events, Ordinary

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• His [Jesus'] historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

  Thomas Paine

  Jesus, Religion, Stories

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.10

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• Anyone, however, who has had dealings with dates knows that they are worse than elusive, they are perverse. Events do not happen at the right time, nor in their proper sequence. That sense of harmony with place and season which is so strong in the historian--if he be a readable historian--is lamentably lacking in history, which takes no pains to verify his most convincing statements.

  Agnes Repplier

  Strong, Pain, History

  Agnes Repplier (1932). “To Think of Tea!”

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• That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith — particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith — places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities. Do not spread disease germs!

  Boyd K. Packer

  Spiritual, Past, Leader

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• Sociologists and historians have avoided looking for the family sources of wars and social violence. Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.

  Lloyd deMause

  War, Lying, Historical

  "The Emotional Life of Nations". Book by Lloyd deMause, 2002.

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• Modern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Views, Years, Disease

  "A Distant Mirror". Book by Barbara Tuchman, p. 534, 1978.

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• The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

  Henry James

  Liberty, Use, Want

  The Aspern Papers preface (1909)

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• I am a critic who is pulled toward history. But Bob Dylan himself is a great historian. He is an historian who acts out history. So it always has a personal stamp. It always has a particular timbre. It always has a particular howl, or a moan, in that voice.

  Greil Marcus

  Voice, Bob, Timbre

  "Talkin’ Bob Dylan". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. October 19, 2010.

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• I find it hard to imagine that future historians will see the Iraq War as a big plus in Bush's ledger, but we have to admit that we simply don't know for sure.

  David Greenberg

  War, Iraq, Imagine

  "Making Presidential History". Online chat with David Greenberg, www.slate.com. August 9, 2007.

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• The only excuse for a novelist, aside from the entertainment and vicarious living his books give the people who read them, is as a sort of second-class historian of the age he lives in. The "reality" he missed by writing about imaginary people, he gains by being able to build a reality more nearly out of his own factual experience than a plain historian or biographer can.

  John Dos Passos

  Book, Writing, Reality

  John Dos Passos (1988). “John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose”

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