Historian Quotes - Page 19

• 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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• Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspiring, Memorable, Thinking

  "The Television Program Transcripts: Part III". www.pbs.org.

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• The apparent pointlessness of fashion may be just what makes it so strong as a zeitgeist sensor. Even I, a designer, do not know why a certain proportion feels dated or why another one feels exciting at a given moment. I leave that to the cultural historians and theorists.

  Jil Sander

  Fashion, Strong, May

  "Jil Sander: 'If I had the power I would ban leggings'". Interview with Jess Cartner-Morley, www.theguardian.com. September 6, 2011.

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• To know John Kennedy, as I did, was to understand the true meaning of the word. He understood that courage is not something to be gauged in a poll or located in a focus group. No adviser can spin it. No historian can backdate it. For, in the age old contest between popularity and principle, only those willing to lose for their convictions are deserving of posterity's approval.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Focus, Age, Approval

  Remarks by President Gerald R. Ford on Receiving the 2001 Profile in Courage Award, www.jfklibrary.org. May 21, 2001.

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• The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  History, Wickedness, Levels

  Theodore Roosevelt (2006). “History as Literature and Other Essays”, p.19, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I would have been an archaeologist or something, maybe a historian. There are a lot of things I would have liked to have done differently, but everything that happened to me made me the person I am today. No matter how negative it seemed at the time or whatever hardship it seemed to have been at that time, Im just the sum of all those amazing experiences.

  Chaka Khan

  Today, Negative, Done

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• To describe love-making is immoral and immodest; you know it is. To describe it as it really is, or would appear to you and me as lookers-on, would be to describe the most dreary farce, to chronicle the most tautological twaddle. To take note of sighs, hand-squeezes, looks at the moon, and so forth--does this business become our dignity as historians? Come away from those foolish young people--they don't want us; and dreary as their farce is, and tautological as their twaddle, you may be sure it amuses them, and that they are happy enough without us.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Love, Moon, Hands

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1873). “Works”, p.292

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• Despite the documented evidence by chess historian HJR Murray, I've always thought that chess was invented by a goddess

  George Koltanowski

  Chess, Goddess, Evidence

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• It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.

  Ramsay MacMullen

  Christian, Reading, Writing

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• I believe that in years to come, historians will see the beginning of the 21st century as the ‘golden age’ of real estate.

  David Lereah

  Real, Believe, Years

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• Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps. Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned. Although we don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true... If the Europeans are honest they should give some of their provinces in Europe - like in Germany, Austria or other countries - to the Zionists and the Zionists can establish their state in Europe. You offer part of Europe and we will support it.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Country, War, Taken

  "Iran Prez: Move Israel To Europe". www.cbsnews.com. December 8, 2005.

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• Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Judging, Political

  "Boothby: Recollections of a Rebel". Book by Robert Boothby, pp. 183-84, October, 1978.

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• The lives of heroes have enriched history, and history has adorned the actions of heroes ; and thus I cannot say whether the historians are more indebted to those who provided them with such noble materials, or those great men to their historians.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Hero, Men, Noble

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• It has always been difficult for historians to fully grasp the intelligence of painters.

  Dore Ashton

  Difficult, Intellect, Painter

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• I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Children, Believe, Answers

  "A Personal History". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, p.301, 1983.

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• Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Running, Regret, Past

  "The Trouble Makers: Dissent over Foreign Policy, 1792-1939". Book by A. J. P. Taylor, "The Radical Tradition: Fox, Paine, and Cobbett", p. 14, 1957.

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• We may need simple and heroic legends for that peculiar genre of literature known as the textbook. But historians must also labor to rescue human beings from their legends in science if only so that we may understand the process of scientific thought aright.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Simple, May, Legends

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Flamingo's Smile: Reflections in Natural History”, p.348, W. W. Norton & Company

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• A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Style, Poet

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 22 June 1776)

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• Future historians will surely see us as having created in the media a Frankenstein monster whom no one knows how to control ordirect, and marvelthat weshould have so meekly subjected ourselves to its destructive and often malign influence.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Media, Monsters, Influence

  1976 Christ and theMedia,'Lecture1'.

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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 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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