Historian Quotes - Page 15

• Over the past 40 years, the tradition of Southern progressivism has been somewhat successfully erased by right-wing revisionist historians.

  John Darnielle

  Past, Years, Wings

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Even well-known historians like Edward Gibbon are talking about how the soldiers of the 18th century were not able to do the same type of exercise [like Romans].

  Garry Kasparov

  Exercise, Talking, Soldier

  Interview With Timothy Taylor, timothytaylor.ca. 2001.

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• There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

  Chinua Achebe

  Jobs, Men, Agony

  "Chinua Achebe, The Art of Fiction No. 139". Interview with Jerome Brooks, www.theparisreview.org. 1994.

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• I may remind you that history is not a branch of literature. The facts of history, like the facts of geology or astronomy, can supply material for literary art; for manifest reasons they lend themselves to artistic representation far more readily than those of the natural sciences; but to clothe the story of human society in a literary dress is no more the part of a historian as a historian, than it is the part of an astronomer as an astronomer to present in an artistic shape the story of the stars.

  J. B. Bury

  Art, Stars, Dresses

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• We still have to realize that if you are say a historian of the Civil War, you don’t know anything special about say Columbus or for that matter the 20th century. You are a consumer of that information, especially if it’s stuff like Columbus and the American Indians. That information isn’t even in history, much of it. Much of it is in anthropology or archeology.

  James W. Loewen

  War, Special, Information

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

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• I'm old enough, I remember when Richard Nixon had the election stolen in 1960. And no serious historian doubts that Illinois and Texas were stolen.

  Newt Gingrich

  Texas, Illinois, Doubt

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Nostalgia is partly illusion in that we remember things differently as we get older, etc. But that doesn't mean, when historians look back on the 1950s, say, from the year 2090, it won't be judged as a saner, slower, less narcissistic, more family-focused, and economically secure time.

  Donald Ray Pollock

  Mean, Years, Looks

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think, as a historian, what strikes one the most about this [Donald'd Trump] program is just simply its nationalism, with his commitment to the redevelopment of American manufacturing and industrial jobs, providing jobs for the constituency that was so important in electing him.

  Judy Woodruff

  Jobs, Commitment, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Historians debate to this day whether Fidel Castro was a communist from the time he took power or only became one after he was spurned by the United States. What is not disputed is that he was always an autocrat moving ruthlessly against anyone who dared oppose him.

  Tom Gjelten

  Moving, United States, Debate

  "Former Cuban Leader Fidel Castro Dies At Age 90" by Tom Gjelten, kenw.org. November 25, 2016.

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• In the Making Of book ["300"] there's a guy named Victor Davis Hanson who is a a frickin genius. He's a Greek historian and we showed him the movie because I wanted him to write a forward to the Making Of book. I was a little nervous to be honest, because I wasn't sure how he'd react.

  Zack Snyder

  Book, Writing, Guy

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• I was born knowing that I had to be a painter, because my father, an art historian, always presented painting as the only acceptable thing in life.

  Domenico Gnoli

  Art, Father, Things In Life

  Source: observer.com

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• Anne Romaine [ is ]folk singer and a skillful historian, even though she was not formally trained in the field [of Malcolm X].

  Manning Marable

  Singers, Fields, Folks

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• [Camillo] Berneri proposed that the anarchists should link up with the effort of Northern Africa to overthrow the Spanish government, carry out land reform, attract the base of the Moorish army, and see if they could undermine [Francisco] Franco's army through political warfare in Northern Africa combined with guerrilla warfare in Spain. Historians laughed at that, but I don't think they should have. This was the kind of war that might have succeeded in stopping Spanish fascism.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Army, Thinking

  Source: thehumanist.com

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• The community itself didn't support the union. Now that's kind of interesting about [Barack] Obama, because Obama was supposedly a community organizer in Chicago at that time. Now I'm sure he read the Chicago Tribune, so he knew about it, but when he went to show his solidarity with the workforce, the first place he went was Caterpillar. I don't think he's forgotten, and the labor movement didn't react. Even radical labor historians didn't remember. It was only 15 years ago, after all, but that's a real triumph of propaganda in many ways.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.iww.org

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• I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.

  Steven Knight

  Jobs, War, Thinking

  Source: deadline.com

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• The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations--there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole.--an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself--is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.

  Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigne

  Christian, Jesus, Keys

  Jean Henri Merle d'Aubigné (1843). “History of the Great Reformation of the Sixteenth Century in Germany, Switzerland, Etc”, p.341

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• From time to time historians need to be shocked.

  Peter Burke

  Needs, Shocked

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• The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

  Barbara Tuchman

  People, History, Poetry

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• Her nomination for vice president in 2008 represents the most desperate inclinations of the Republican Party. In two hundred years, I suspect historians will use Palin as an example of how insane America became in the decade following the destruction of the World Trade Center, and her origin story will seem as extraterrestrial and eccentric as Abe Lincoln jumping out of a window to undermine a voting quorum in 1840.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Party, Two, America

  Chuck Klosterman (2014). “I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined)”, p.187, Simon and Schuster

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• Obama is not just a powerful speaker, but a thinker engaged with the ideas of his country and his age--this argument by historian James Kloppenberg should therefore fascinate anyone interested in American politics or how ideas shape public life. Tracing the influences of Obama's family, educational, and work experiences on his ideas, Reading Obama locates a unique individual in the crosscurrents of American democracy and continuing fights over American ideals.

  Martha Minow

  Country, Powerful, Educational

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• IT is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over, that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures. Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns.

  Maureen Dowd

  Trying, Muzzle, Looks

  "Bishops Play Church Queens as Pawns" by Maureen Dowd, www.nytimes.com. April 28, 2012.

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• Wherever Christianity has produced what historians call a 'popular piety' claiming to be part of the national heritage, anti-Christian reaction among the intelligentsia has followed.

  J. I. Packer

  Christian, Religious, Heritage

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• What is a historian? Someone who doesn't write well enough to work on a daily.

  Karl Kraus

  Writing, Enough, Wells

  Karl Kraus (1976). “Half-truths & one-and-a-half truths: selected aphorisms”

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• It is clear that everybody interested in science must be interested in world 3 objects. A physical scientist, to start with, may be interested mainly in world 1 objects--say crystals and X-rays. But very soon he must realize how much depends on our interpretation of the facts, that is, on our theories, and so on world 3 objects. Similarly, a historian of science, or a philosopher interested in science must be largely a student of world 3 objects.

  Karl Popper

  Rays, World, May

  Karl Popper (2005). “Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography”, p.213, Routledge

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• 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.

  James Harrington

  Men, May, Firsts

  1656 The Commonwealth of Oceana.

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