Historian Quotes - page 2

Every historian discloses a new horizon. (George Sand)
Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading. View quote
William Blake
It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected. View quote
Mircea Eliade
No honest historian can take part with - or against - the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the human race should be merely a fact to be grouped with other vital statistics. View quote
Henry Adams
David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism. View quote
Christopher Hitchens
I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destinies of man. View quote
Steven Runciman
The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian – ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. View quote
Lytton Strachey
Conservatives - or better, pro-corporate apologists - hijacked the vocabulary of Jeffersonian liberalism and turned words like "progress," "opportunity," and "individualism" into tools for making the plunder of America sound like divine right ... This "degenerate and unlovely age," as one historian calls it, exists in the mind of Karl Rove - the reputed brain of George W. Bush - as the seminal age of inspiration for politics and governance of America today. View quote
Bill Moyers
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. View quote
Walter Benjamin
Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed ... History is a tale of efforts that failed, of aspirations that weren't realized... So, as a historian, one has to live with a sense of the inevitability of tragedy. View quote
Henry Kissinger
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)
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. View quote
A. J. P. Taylor
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." View quote
Mark Twain
Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them. View quote
Leo Strauss
So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on. View quote
A. B. Yehoshua
The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian. View quote
James Henry Breasted
I wanted to work in the arts. My dream come true would be to be an architectural historian and work with the royal palaces and all the fabulous art collections. But I'm not committed enough. View quote
Jaye Davidson
The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language. View quote
Paul de Man
The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case. View quote
Howard Nemerov
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. View quote
Ferdinand de Saussure
The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his due. (Buffalo Bill)
But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general public. View quote
Bernice Johnson Reagon
The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes. View quote
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party. View quote
Goldwin Smith
No man can be a politician, except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician. View quote
James Harrington