Historian Quotes - Page 30

• I'm not a historian, and I wouldn't want to be. I want to change the world. Attack the elite. Overturn the hierarchy. Look at my stories and you'll notice that the villains are always, always, those in power. The heroes are the little people. I hate the establishment. Always have, always will.

  Terry Deary

  Hate, Hero, People

  "Terry Deary: The man behind the Horrible Histories". Interview with Jon Henley, www.theguardian.com. July 13, 2012.

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• No, this customary aim of research by excavators is completely foreign to the historical work with which I am occupied... my sole and only aim is to be able to establish a historical fact, on which I disagree with some eminent historians and geographers.

  Heinrich Schliemann

  Historical, Facts, Research

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• It must be splendid to command millions of people in great national ventures, to lead a hundred thousand to victory in battle. But it seems to me greater still to discover fundamental truths in a very modest room with very modest means - truths that will still be foundations of human knowledge when the memory of these battles is painstakingly preserved only in the archives of the historian.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Memories, Mean, People

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• I think a Person who is thus terrified with the Imagination of Ghosts and Spectres much more reasonable, than one who contrary to the Reports of all Historians sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the Traditions of all Nations, thinks the Appearance of Spirits fabulous and groundless.

  Joseph Addison

  Thinking, Imagination, Sacred

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator: With a Biographical and Critical Preface, and Explanatory Notes ...”, p.353

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• The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Space, Decision, Soldier

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• As the NFF Historian, I'll have a new platform to indulge my passion for the most emotional, colorful and hysterical game ever developed by mankind and Walter Camp.

  Dan Jenkins

  Passion, Emotional, Games

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• If an historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses, and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his work for satire rather than for history.

  Pierre Bayle

  History, Weakness, Crime

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• Oh no, I'm not a historian or anything like that.

  Lee Hazlewood

  "Burning brightly". Interview with Richard Hawley, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2006.

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• Far too long, historians have accepted the claim that the conversion of the Emperor Constantine (ca. 285-337) caused the triumph of Christianity. To the contrary, he destroyed its most attractive and dynamic aspects, turning a high-intensity, grassroots movement into an arrogant institution controlled by an elite who often managed to be both brutal and lax.

  Rodney Stark

  Long, Triumph, Arrogant

  "For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery". Book by Rodney Stark, August 29, 2004.

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• I am not a historian. I happen to think that the content of my mother's life - her myths, her superstitions, her prayers, the contents of her pantry, the smell of her kitchen, the song that escaped from her sometimes parched lips, her thoughtful repose and pregnant laughter - are all worthy of art.

  August Wilson

  Mother, Song, Art

  August Wilson (1997). “Seven Guitars”, p.10, Penguin

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• All that the historians give us are little oases in the desert of time, and we linger fondly in these, forgetting the vast tracks between one and another that were trodden by the weary generations of men.

  J. A. Spender

  Men, Oasis, Track

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• Whether religion is man-made is a question for philosophers or theologians. But the forms are man-made. They are a human response to something. As a historian of religions, I am interested in those expressions.

  Mircea Eliade

  Men, Expression, Philosopher

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• When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; I therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions.

  Samuel Johnson

  Beautiful, Illustration, Firsts

  Samuel Johnson (2006). “A Dictionary of the English Language: an Anthology: an Anthology”, p.101, Penguin UK

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• Two main groups like to drop the readymade bomb—galleries and art historians. Galleries love to drop the Duchamp brand because dealers can try to convince clients of an artist’s worth just by mentioning the mouthwatering response readymade. Most Art Historians aren’t interested in what artists are making in Bushwick studios, most of whom rarely wake up with Duchamp on the brain.

  Paddy Johnson

  Art, Two, Brain

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• Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Passion, Actors, Reason

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• It is useful to the historian, among others, to be able to see the commonest forms of different phenomena, whether phonetic, morphological or other, and how language lives, carries on and changes over time.

  Ferdinand de Saussure

  Different, Able, Language

  "Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linghuistics (1910-1911)" by Ferdinand de Saussure, Pergamon Press, www.marxists.org. 1993.

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• Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

  Josef Albers

  Art, Tradition, Revive

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• Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

  Spencer Abraham

  Thinking, Years, Doubt

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• To what degree are historians chroniclers of the truth and to what degree are they just novelists, frankly?

  Peter Morgan

  Novelists, Degrees

  Source: deadline.com

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• It will be one of the tragedies of Christian history if future historians record that at the height of the twentieth century the church was one of the greatest bulwarks of white supremacy.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Christian, White, Tragedy

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• The Britons (say historians) were naked, civilized men, learned, studious, abstruse in thought and contemplation; naked, simple, plain in their acts and manners; wiser than after ages.

  William Blake

  Simple, Men, Age

  William Blake, David V. Erdman, Harold Bloom (1982). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.542, Univ of California Press

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• If an historian be an unbeliever in all heroism, if he be a man who brings every thing down to the level of a common mediocrity, depend upon it, the truth is not found in such a writer.

  Matthew Arnold

  Men, Heroism, Mediocrity

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• If experiments are performed thousands of times at all seasons and in every place without once producing the effects mentioned by your philosophers, poets, and historians, this will mean nothing and we must believe their words rather than our own eyes?

  Galileo Galilei

  Believe, Mean, Eye

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• The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher - in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light ofthe past for the purposes of the future

  John Maynard Keynes

  Past, Light, Together

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes: Essays in biography”

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• For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

  Hilary Mantel

  Creative, Kind, Pornography

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