Historian Quotes - Page 16

• The good tidings which the historian of the past brings with throbbing heart may be lost in a void the very moment he opens his mouth.

  Walter Benjamin

  Heart, Past, Mouths

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.

  Walter Benjamin

  Winning, Past, Enemy

  Walter Benjamin (1968). “Illuminations”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

  Howard Hodgkin

  Art, Historical, Periods

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• The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.

  Austin O'Malley

  Age, Sun, Passionate

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• It should be the historian's business not to belittle but to illuminate the greatness of man's spirit.

  C. V. Wedgwood

  Greatness, Men, Spirit

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• Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.

  Robert the Bruce

  Liars, Hero, England

  "Fictional character: Robert the Bruce". "Braveheart", 1995.

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• Ghostly legends dot the Prairie State from its big cities to its small towns. These stories make each community unique in a way that no other landmark ever could But Michael Kleen understands that these ghosts are more than just stories. As a folklorist and historian, Kleen shows readers the connection between our past and our present. Haunting Illinois is more than just a ghostly travel guide, it’s an adventure offering new insight on the haunts you know, but also takes you on a trip to the spirits in your own backyard.

  Jeff Belanger

  Adventure, Unique, Past

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• Newt Gingrich seldom misses a chance to note that he is a historian.

  Adam Hochschild

  Missing, Chance, Notes

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• If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life.

  Henri Pirenne

  Love Life, Eye, Stuff

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• The historian assesses that the investment of the wealthy classes in the Bank of England wedded them to the fate of the nation as a whole and to the maintenance of its stability.

  Walter Russell Mead

  Fate, Class, Maintenance

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• Even now, the irony that so non-intellectual a man should choose to engage the Soviet Union on the battlefield of ideas has eluded most commentators and historians.

  Richard Perle

  War, Men, Ideas

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• A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the mind.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Art, Mind, Moments

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.86

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• Let's put it this way. I question whether 6 million Jews actually died in Nazi death camps. There are two major sources for Holocaust stories. One is the Nuremburg war-crimes trial, which has been shown by all honest historians to be a farce of justice. Another source is the great body of literature and media work, and at least 90% of that material is from biased Jewish sources.

  David Duke

  War, Media, Two

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• Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Memorable, Men, World

  Henry David Thoreau, Odell Shepard (1961). “The Heart of Thoreau's Journals”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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• In the end it may well be that Britain will be honored by the historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.

  David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech

  May, Empires, Way

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• If only the sense of actuality can be lulled-and it sleeps for ever in most historians-there is no passion that cannot be gratified in the past.

  E. M. Forster

  Passion, Sleep, Past

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• A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Gratitude, Research, Might

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• If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

  Greil Marcus

  Unique, Bob, Sense Of Humor

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• What kinds of problems, and what kinds of meanings, happen in the paint? Or as one historian puts it, 'What is thinking in painting, as opposed to thinking about painting?' These are important questions, and they are very hard to answer using the language of art history.

  James Elkins

  Art, Thinking, Important

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.3, Routledge

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• Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought.

  Victor Hugo

  Writing, Play, Tyrants

  "Les misérables".

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• Artists are the emotional historians of the world.

  Richard Blanco

  Artist, Emotional, World

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• He is likely to remain the one historian of the Sierra; he imported into his view the imagination of the poet and the reverence of the worshipper.... William Kent, during Muir’s life, paid him a rare tribute in giving to the nation a park of redwoods with the understanding that it should be named Muir Woods. But the nation owes him more. His work was not sectional but for the whole people, for he was the real father of the forest reservations of America.

  Robert Underwood Johnson

  Father, Real, America

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• I am among those who believe that our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Believe, Civilization

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• It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Years, Twenties

  Rudolf Arnheim (1990). “Parables of Sun Light: Observations on Psychology, the Arts, and the Rest”, p.247, Univ of California Press

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• The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

  Lucian

  Tasks, Happened

  Lucian of Samosata (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Lucian (Illustrated)”, p.822, Delphi Classics

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