Historical Knowledge Quotes

• Historical knowledge is indispensable for those who want to build a better world

  Ludwig von Mises

  World, Want, Indispensable

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.

  Edward Said

  Data, Purpose, World

  Edward W. Said (2015). “Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World”, p.240, Vintage

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• Genuine historical knowledge requires nobility of character, a profound understanding of human existence - not detachment and objectivity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Character, Objectivity, Profound

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• On the basis of biological, sociological, and historical knowledge, we should recognize that the individual self is subject to death or decay, but the sum total of individual achievement, for better or worse, lives on in the immortality of The Larger.

  Hu Shih

  Self, Achievement, Decay

  Hu Shih (2013). “English Writings of Hu Shih: Literature and Society”, p.99, Springer Science & Business Media

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• A modern theory of knowledge which takes account of the relational as distinct from the merely relative character of all historical knowledge must start with the assumption that there are spheres of thought in which it is impossible to conceive of absolute truth existing independently of the values and position of the subject and unrelated to the social context.

  Karl Mannheim

  Knowledge, Character, Historical

  "Ideology and Utopia". Book by Karl Mannheim, 1936.

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• The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts masquerade in the guise of wars or revolutions.

  Paul de Man

  War, Revolution, Facts

  Paul de Man (2013). “Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism”, p.165, Routledge

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• It is easy to see, though it scarcely needs to be pointed out, since it is involved in the fact that Reason is set aside, that faith is not a form of knowledge; for all knowledge is either a knowledge of the eternal, excluding the temporal and historical as indifferent, or it is pure historical knowledge. No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Faith, Knowledge, Historical

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• The mere notion of photography, when we introduce it into our meditation on the genesis of historical knowledge and its true value, suggests the simple question: Could such and such a fact, as it is narrated here, have been photographed?

  Paul Valery

  Photography, Simple, Meditation

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