Historian Quotes - Page 3

• No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Greatness, History

  On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic "The Hero as Divinity" (1841)

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• When you compare yourself with others in matters of wealth, position, and health, you should look at people less favoured than yourself. When you compare yourself with others in matters of religion, knowledge and virtue, look at people who are better than yourself.

  Ibn Hazm

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Health

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• Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates.

  F. E. Adcock

  Military, War, Army

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• Souls reconstructed with faith transform agony into peace.

  Aberjhani

  Inspirational, Faith, Spiritual

  Aberjhani (2014). “Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry”, p.20, Lulu.com

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• Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

  Greil Marcus

  Reading, Writing, Mean

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• With a novelist's sense of drama and a historian's understanding of the social forces that shape our lives, Tom Gjelten has captured vividly -- through the chronicle of a powerful family's fortunes -- one of the great political dramas of our time.

  Ronald Steel

  Powerful, Drama, Political

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• Out of the fictitious book I get the expression of the life, of the times, of the manners, of the merriment, of the dress, the pleasure, the laughter, the ridicules of society. The old times live again. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Laughter, Book, Expression

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• The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Writing, Law, History

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• Futurism today is led by science-fiction writers, by sociologists, by historians. Now, I have nothing against them. I'm sure they do great work. But they're not scientists. They're clueless.

  Michio Kaku

  Clueless, Fiction, Today

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• Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

  Herodotus

  Time, History, Eternity

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• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

  Winston Churchill

  Determination, Military, War

  Speech in House of Commons, 13 May 1940

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• Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

  James W. Loewen

  Past, Infancy Is, History

  James W. Loewen (2013). “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, p.16, The New Press

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• Historians will look back on this era and how the Internet changed what we value, what we consider art, the way we think, the way we define what it means to be human. In Sincerity and Authenticity, Lionel Trilling describes the changes that occurred between about 1850 and 1920, due to the Industrial Revolution and the resulting migration of people from small communities to relative anonymity in cities. Because of that paradigm shift, ideas about what it means to be an individual underwent a transformation that leeched into all areas. Art, psychology, history, marriage, gender.

  Debra Monroe

  Art, Mean, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• All revolutionary advances in science may consist less of sudden and dramatic revelations than a series of transformations, of which the revolutionary significance may not be seen (except afterwards, by historians) until the last great step. In many cases the full potentiality and force of a most radical step in such a sequence of transformations may not even be manifest to its author.

  I. Bernard Cohen

  Science, May, Lasts

  I. Bernard Cohen (1983). “The Newtonian Revolution”, p.162, Cambridge University Press

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• When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South African government, where a few million white people subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending Angola. These things have not been written down but they need to be told as part of the reality of history which should not be distorted the way the historians connected to the power elite tend to do.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Reality, Government, White

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• In a certain sense all men are historians.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, History, Certain

  Thomas Carlyle (1855). “Critical and Miscellaneous Essays: By Thomas Carlyle”, p.220

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• At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species.

  Paul Johnson

  Writing, Careers, Creative

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• I'm not especially interested in the job of the historian or journalist of trying to figure out what was true and what was not.

  Jonathon Keats

  Jobs, Trying, Figures

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Ultimately a historian has to put together a cohesive work. That doesn't mean that your curiosity is ever totally satisfied.

  Adele Logan Alexander

  Mean, Curiosity, Together

  Source: www.neh.gov

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• Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

  George W. Bush

  Rewriting History

  George W. Bush during a Meeting with Small Business Owners in Elizabeth, New Jersey, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. June 16, 2003.

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• Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio frequently takes a back seat.

  Thomas A. Bailey

  Responsibility, Thinking, History

  Thomas A. Bailey (1969). “Essays Diplomatic and Undiplomatic of Thomas A. Bailey”, p.10, Ardent Media

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• [T]he historian and the detective have much in common.

  Ralph Davis

  History, Detectives, Common

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• Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

  Edmond de Goncourt

  Past, Novelists, Stories

  Edmond de Goncourt, Jules de Goncourt (1958). “The Goncourt journals, 1851-1870”

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• I remember, when I was in university I studied history, and there was this one major historian of the Third Reich, Ian Kershaw. And his quote was, 'The path to Auschwitz was paved with indifference.' I know it's not very funny being a comedian talking about the Holocaust, but I think it's an interesting idea that not everyone in Germany had to be a raving anti-Semite. They just had to be apathetic.

  Sacha Baron Cohen

  Thinking, Talking, Ideas

  "The brilliance of Sacha Baron Cohen" by Harry Phibbs, www.theguardian.com. June 4, 2009.

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• It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Drama, Adventure, Character

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