Historian Quotes - Page 18

• I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.

  Sherman Alexie

  Thinking, Selfishness, Agendas

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it.

  John Cusack

  Lying, Thinking, Poet

  "The Raven - John Cusack interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous, planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world - that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

  Richard Lindzen

  Powerful, Special, World

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• No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Men, Solitude

  C. S. Lewis (1984). “The Business of Heaven: Daily Readings from C. S. Lewis”, p.206, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.

  Philip Sidney

  War, Teaching, Heaven

  Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Babington Macaulay (2010). “English Essays: From Sir Philip Sidney to Macaulay”, p.23, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves.

  Lion Feuchtwanger

  Struggle, Thinking, Views

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• My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.

  Deborah Harkness

  Tudors, Firsts, Return

  Deborah Harkness (2014). “All Souls Trilogy”, p.525, Penguin

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• A historian should not be didactic-that is a word that makes my blood run cold.

  Edmund Morgan

  Running, Blood, Cold

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• The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.

  Geoffrey Nunberg

  Writing, Italian, Use

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• The footnote would seem to be the smallest detail in a work of history. Yet it carries a large burden of responsibility, testifying to the validity of the work, the integrity (and the humility) of the historian, and to the dignity of the discipline.

  Gertrude Himmelfarb

  Integrity, Humility, Responsibility

  Gertrude Himmelfarb (1995). “On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society”, Vintage

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• Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.

  Aldrich Ames

  Europe, Gdp, Invasion

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The only business of the historian is to relate things exactly as they are: this he can never do as long as he is afraid

  Lucian

  Long, Relate

  Lucian of Samosata (2013). “Trips to the Moon”, p.27, Baen Publishing Enterprises

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• Radical historians now the tell the story of Thanksgiving from the point of view of the turkey.

  Mason Cooley

  Views, Turkeys, History

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• The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history thats least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

  Tom Hayden

  Issues, Rights, Too Much

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• In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabeled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.

  Kate Morton

  Real, Opportunity, Order

  Kate Morton (2010). “The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden”, p.274, Simon and Schuster

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• A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.

  Niall Ferguson

  Remember

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• The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

  Marc Bloch

  Definitions, Facts, Incapable

  Marc Bloch (1992). “The Historian's Craft”, p.40, Manchester University Press

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• Historians will consider this a dark age. Science historians can read Galileos technical correspondence from the 1590s but not Marvin Minskys from the 1960s.

  Stewart Brand

  Dark, Age, Statistics

  Stewart Brand (1999). “The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility”, p.92, Basic Books

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• 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.

  Mircea Eliade

  Embarrassing Questions, Answers, Problem

  Mircea Eliade (2013). “The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion”, p.72, University of Chicago Press

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• Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise.

  Tony Benn

  Educational, Exercise, Direct Action

  "New Politics" Magazine, 1970.

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• The gods have fled, I know. My sense is the gods have always been essentially absent. I do not believe human beings have played games or sports from the beginning merely to summon or to please or to appease the gods. If anthropologists and historians believe that, it is because they believe whatever they have been able to recover about what humankind told the gods humankind was doing. I believe we have played games, and watched games, to imitate the gods, to become godlike in our worship of eachother and, through those moments of transmutation, to know for an instant what the gods know.

  A. Bartlett Giamatti

  Sports, Believe, Games

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• I learned early on that war forms its own culture. The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by mythmakers- historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists, and the state- all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism, power, chances to rise above our small stations in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that has a grotesque and dark beauty.

  Chris Hedges

  War, Dark, Years

  Chris Hedges (2014). “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, p.3, PublicAffairs

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• Incredibly deep research combines with the talents of a fine historian and writer to produce superb narrative history. The true character and relationship of these two iconic westerners emerge to suppress myth and correct more than a century of tomes laden with bad history.

  Robert M. Utley

  Character, Two, Research

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• A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.

  Peter Medawar

  Men, Discovery, Battle

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• There is more to creative mastership than the surface of satisfaction and political certainty. The music of Joe Fonda is part of a living tradition of belief and dedication. Future historians will be surprised at the breadth of Mr. Fonda's offerings. This is a real virtuoso and composer of the highest order.

  Anthony Braxton

  Real, Dedication, Offering

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