Quotes about historians

The historian without his facts is rootless and futile the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless.

Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects.

Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.

Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands.

All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.

The most striking difference between the ancient and modern sophists is that the ancients were satisfied with a passing victory of the argument at the expense of truth, whereas the moderns want a more lasting victory at the expense of reality. In other words, one destroyed the dignity of human thought whereas the others destroy the dignity of human action. The old manipulators of logic were the concern of the philosopher, whereas the modern manipulators of facts stand in the way of the historian

It is not acceptable that election winners interpret history. History should be left to historians who have a difficult task. They should try to avoid a one-sided or personal interpretation of history. Furthermore, some collective factors (such as national enthusiasm) may influence objectivity that is crucial for the interpretation of historical events.

A historian tries to understand what happened, why it happened, what was the context, who did what, and what assumptions led them to act as they did. A historian customarily displays a certain diffidence about trying to influence events, knowing that unanticipated developments often lead to unintended consequences.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously refle

Even so, I think historians have more to offer than perspective on our present woes. The foreign country we call the past also lets us look beyond the horizons of what is, to see what could be.

where actual evidence had been a bit sparse he had, in the best traditions of the keen ethnic historian, inferred from revealed self-evident wisdom* *Made it upand extrapolated from associated sources** **had read a lot of stuff that other people had made up, too.

[Tolstoy] denounced [many historians'] lamentable tendency to simplify. The experts stumble onto a battlefield, into a parliament or public square, and demand, "Where is he? Where is he?" "Where is who?" "The hero, of course! The leader, the creator, the great man!" And having found him, they promptly ignore all his peers and troops and advisors. They close their eyes and abstract their Napoleon from the mud and the smoke and the masses on either side, and marvel at how such a figure could possi

Chicks dig historians.

An historian is a kind detective in search of the fact — remote or otherwise - that brings to a set of events apparently unconnected with each other, the link that unites them, their justification, their logic.You cannot imagine what great delights this profession affords. It’s as if, in every incunablum, consumed by worms and steeped in boredom, in every inarticulate scrawl, in every collection of forgotten chronicles, there presides a mischievous sprite, winking at you, who at the appropriate

The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.

Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awf

Thus, by science I mean, first of all, a worldview giving primacy to reason and observation and a methodology aimed at acquiring accurate knowledge of the natural and social world. This methodology is characterized, above all else, by the critical spirit: namely, the commitment to the incessant testing of assertions through observations and/or experiments — the more stringent the tests, the better — and to revising or discarding those theories that fail the test. One corollary of the critical sp

In the history of the world, we have left our footprints by our unique stories.

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.

Indeed, a parallel history of Europe could be written which viewed family life and regular work as the essential Continental motor of civilization. Then war and revolution would need to be seen by historians as startling, sick departures from that norm of a kind that require serious explanation, rather than viewing periods of gentle introversy as mere tiresome interludes before the next thrill-packed bloodbath.

History is rich knowledge, In your travel, learn the brief history of the place visited. .

In your travel, learn the brief history of the place visited. History is rich knowledge.

History is so comprehensive and detailed. I couldn't be a history student. I thought there was a time when I couldn't be a history maker, because of my limited understanding of what that meant. Today, thinking about the passing of Julian Bond and a wonderful conversation with a woman who has influenced so much, I think we all are history makers. All of our names will not be as known as Mr. Bond's or in books, but our names will be on someone's tongue and our memories will be in someone's heart,

I began with the desire to speak with the dead.

After 15 years of work I have achieved as a common German soldier and merely with my fanatical willpower the unity of the German nation and have freed it from the death sentence of Versailles.

History is a vast early warning system.

History is simply a piece of paper covered with print the main thing is still to make history not to write it.

History is the devil's scripture.

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

I claim not to have controlled events but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

In essence the renaissance is simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that History has to teach.

The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

The people of Crete unfortunately make more history than they can consume locally.

When the historian Charles A. Beard was asked about the lessons from history he said there were four: 1. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. 2. Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power. 3. The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small. 4. When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

History doesn't pass the dishes again.

The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.

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

Most history is a record of the triumphs disasters and follies of top people. The black hole in it is the way of life of mute inglorious men and women who made no nuisance of themselves in the world.

Nostalgia is a seductive liar.

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past historians can - it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy and it always feels uncomfortable.

History is philosophy learned from examples.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.

Noble acts and momentous events happen in the same way and produce the same impression as the ordinary facts.

Don't brood on what's past but never forget it either.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.

I never realized that there was history close at hand beside my very own home. I did not realize that the old grave that stood among the brambles at the foot of our farm was history.

All history is but the lengthened shadow of a great man.

The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his daily bread and butter.

The historian looks backward. In the end he also believes backward.

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.

The past is a work of art free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

Any event once it has occurred can be made to appear inevitable by a competent historian.

History is not another name for the past as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

History is: Fables agreed upon - Voltaire The biography of a few stout and earnest persons - Ralph Waldo Emerson A vast Mississippi of falsehood - Matthew Arnold A confused heap of facts - Lord Chesterfield A cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man -

With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds.

Give the historians something to write about.

Societies that do not eat people are fascinated by those that do.

War makes rattling good history but Peace is poor reading.

The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.

History is past politics and politics present history.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

When great changes occur in history when great principles are involved as a rule the majority are wrong.

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles bills and proclamations.

History n: an account mostly false of events mostly unimportant which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves and soldiers mostly fools.

The historical sense involves a perception not only of the pastness of the past but of its presence.

Truth is the only merit that gives dignity and worth to history.

History is more or less bunk.

I have no history but the length of my bones.

History is a pact between the dead the living and the yet unborn.

A people without history is like wind on the buffalo grass.

The function of posterity is to look after itself.

The world's history is constant like the laws of nature and simple like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

History is just the portrayal of crimes and misfortunes.

We should keep the Panama Canal. After all we stole it fair and square.

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

The memories of men are too frail a thread to hang history from.

The rich experience of history teaches that up to now not a single class has voluntarily made way for another class.

Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

Insurance companies sell what might happen tomorrow. Historians sell what certainly happened yesterday.

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it.

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of ‘greatness.’ ‘Greatness,’ it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the ‘great’ man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a ‘great’ man can be blamed.

It is the vice of the journalist, I once wrote, to think that history can always be reduced to experience, and of the scholar to think that experience can always be reduced to history. History and experience are far more frequently out of sync, or running on parallel tracks.

Writers and other artists are mostly just historians, produced by nature to describe, decipher and thus historically represent the universe.