Historian Quotes - Page 21

• I feel like I've always been a full-time historian, but nobody knows it.

  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  Nobody Knows, Feels, Knows

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• As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Science, Past, Order

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• I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

  Edward Gibbon

  Taken, Future, Recovery

  'Memoirs of My Life' (1796) ch. 8 (on the completion of 'Decline and Fall')

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• One cannot be a good historian of the outward, visible world without giving some thought to the hidden, private life of ordinary people; and on the other hand one cannot be a good historian of this inner life without taking into account outward events where these are relevant.

  Victor Hugo

  Hands, Order, Two

  "Les misérables".

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• The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies...

  James Anthony Froude

  Firsts, Duty

  "The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon: The Story as Told by the Imperial Ambassadors Resident at the Court of Henry VIII". Book by James Anthony Froude, 1891.

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• The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

  Ernest Renan

  Lying, Creating, History

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• They [slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom-jumped into the waves for freedom-starved for freedom-fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot-and their tyrants have been their historians!

  Lydia M. Child

  Tyrants, Justice, Diversity

  "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans". Book by Lydia Maria Child, Chapter VI, utc.iath.virginia.edu. 1833.

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• Among German historians, there's really not much debate about whether or not Hitler was a social Darwinist. He clearly was drawing on Darwinian ideas.

  Richard Weikart

  Ideas, Drawing, Religion

  "'Expelled' Correct on Darwin, Hitler Link, Says Christian Group" by Alexander J. Sheffrin, www.christianpost.com. May 1, 2008.

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• As political theorist Michael Parenti points out, historians often overlook Fascism's economic agenda--the partnership between Big Capital and Big Government--in their analysis of its authoritarian social program. Indeed, according to Bertram Gross in his startlingly prescient Friendly Fascism (1980), it is possible to achieve fascist goals within an ostensibly democratic society.

  Richard Heinberg

  Government, Goal, Political

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• Susan Campbell has brought Isabella's fascinating forgotten story back to life with the deep research of a born historian and the vibrant readable prose style of a veteran journalist.

  Debby Applegate

  Style, Stories, Research

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• The selection process has been powerful enough to produce one indisputable outcome: the family is a universal human institution. . . . In virtually every society into which historians or anthropologists have inquired, one finds people living together on the basis of kinship ties and having responsibility for raising children. . . . Even in societies where men and women have relatively unrestricted sexual access to one another beginning at an early age, marriage is still the basis for family formation. It is desired by the partners and expected by society.

  James Q. Wilson

  Family, Powerful, Children

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• As a historian, he felt it his duty to respect everything that had ever been respected, except for the occasional statesman.

  Henry Adams

  Political, Politics, Occasional

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• We're not going to waste our valuable space or your precious energy by giving equal time to stories of tragedy, failure, and tumult. They get far more that their fair share of attention everywhere else. Future historians might even conclude that our age suffered from a collective obsessive-compulsive disorder: the pathological need to repetitively seek out reasons for how bad life is.

  Rob Brezsny

  Media, Space, Giving

  Rob Brezsny (2005). “Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings”, p.66, Frog Books

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• The main duty of the historian of mathematics, as well as his fondest privilege, is to explain the humanity of mathematics, to illustrate its greatness, beauty and dignity, and to describe how the incessant efforts and accumulated genius of many generations have built up that magnificent monument, the object of our most legitimate pride as men, and of our wonder, humility and thankfulness, as individuals. The study of the history of mathematics will not make better mathematicians but gentler ones, it will enrich their minds, mellow their hearts, and bring out their finer qualities.

  George Sarton

  Heart, Humility, Pride

  George Sarton (1936). “The study of the history of mathematics and the study of the history of science”

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• When historians look back on our century, they may remember it most, not for space travel or the release of nuclear energy, but as the time when the peoples of the world first came to take one another seriously.

  Huston Smith

  Space, Energy, Nuclear

  Huston Smith (2009). “The World's Religions, Revised and Updated: A Concise Introduction”, p.19, Harper Collins

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• The connoisseur might be defined as a laconic art historian, and the art historian as a loquacious connoisseur.

  Erwin Panofsky

  Art, Might, Laconic

  Erwin Panofsky (1955). “Meaning in the visual arts: papers in and on art history”

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• I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.

  Boyd K. Packer

  Uplifting, Hurt, Hard Times

  "Faithful History: Essays on Writing Mormon History". Book edited by George D. Smith, April 1992.

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• The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves.

  Ernst Junger

  Games, Play, Wave

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• 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.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Science, Libertarian, Faces

  Konrad Lorenz (2005). “On Aggression”, p.115, Routledge

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• The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.

  Howard Zinn

  Justice, Political, Support

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.8, Routledge

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• Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing - he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.

  Lionel Trilling

  Writing, Judging, Giving

  Lionel Trilling, Leon Wieseltier (2009). “The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays”, p.552, Northwestern University Press

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• I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

  Peter Berg

  Father, Forever, Navy

  "Brooklyn Decker and Director Peter Berg Talk BATTLESHIP, Naval Warfare and the Design of the Aliens at WonderCon". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 19, 2012.

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• As a historian I understand how histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two generations or three from now, some serious sober historian will write a history that sort of implies I was whoever I was.

  Newt Gingrich

  Writing, Two, Enemy

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• The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.

  Henry Adams

  Honesty, History, Trying

  Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S Grant, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Adams (2016). “Great American Lives: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie, and The Education of Henry Adams”, p.1670, Open Road Media

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• A society in stable equilibrium is-by definition-one that has no history and wants no historians.

  Henry Adams

  History, Definitions, Want

  Henry Adams (1920). “The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma”

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