Historian Quotes - Page 11

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

  Dore Ashton

  Difficult, Intellect, Painter

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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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• My basic notion regarding the matter of historical recognition is basically, it's a matter that should be left to the good hands of historians and experts.

  Shinzo Abe

  Hands, Historical, Experts

  The Washington Post Translated Interview, www.washingtonpost.com. February 20, 2013.

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

  Greil Marcus

  Unique, Bob, Sense Of Humor

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

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• What kinds of problems, and what kinds of meanings, happen in the paint? Or as one historian puts it, 'What is thinking in painting, as opposed to thinking about painting?' These are important questions, and they are very hard to answer using the language of art history.

  James Elkins

  Art, Thinking, Important

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.3, Routledge

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• Women have their uses for historians.

  Ronald Syme

  Use

  Ronald Syme (1989). “The Augustan Aristocracy”, p.168, Oxford University Press

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• The Rebecca Riots by David Williams is an unassuming book, but its significance is universal. The book and its author determined my life; they made me want to be a historian of Wales and of the world.

  Kenneth O. Morgan

  Book, World, Want

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• 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.

  William Blake

  Reading, Rubbish, Action

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.579, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Journalists who make mistakes get sued for libel; historians who make mistakes get to publish a revised edition.

  Bill Moyers

  Mistake, Journalism, Libel

  Bill Moyers (2008). “Moyers on Democracy”, p.109, Anchor

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• 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.

  Bill Moyers

  Inspiration, Opportunity, Divine Right

  Speech to the "Take Back America" Conference, June 10, 2003.

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• The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.

  Georg Brandes

  Art, Past, Men

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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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• No serious historian of nations and nationalism can be a committed political nationalist... Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Political, Too Much, Serious

  "Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality". Book by Eric Hobsbawm (p. 12), May 24, 1990.

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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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• 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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