Historian Quotes - Page 28

• I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

  John Adams

  Men, Catholic, Earth

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.219

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• As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian.

  Hugh Blair

  History, Quality, Fundamentals

  Hugh Blair (1858). “Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres: Chiefly from the Lectures of Dr. Blair”, p.263

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• It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past.

  Mieczyslaw Jastrun

  Past, Hands, Errors

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• Historians are gossips who tease the dead

  Voltaire

  History, Gossip, Tease

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• The librarians know the secrets, not the historians

  Dee Brown

  Book, Secret, Library

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• Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Truth, Eye

  Vladimir Nabokov, Michael Scammell (1963). “The gift”

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• Why do I feel so exercised about what we think of the people of the Middle Ages? ... I guess it's because so many of their voices are ringing vibrantly in my ears - Chaucer's, Boccaccio's, Henry Knighton's, Thomas Walsingham's. Froissart's, Jean Creton's... writers and contemporary historians of the period who seem to me just as individual, just as alive as we are today. We need to get to know these folk better in order to know who we are ourselves.

  Terry Jones

  Thinking, Order, Voice

  "The Middle Ages of reason" by Terry Jones, www.theguardian.com. February 8, 2004.

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• In history as it comes to be written, there is usually some Spirit of the Age which historians can define, but the shape of things is seldom so clear to those who live them. To most thoughtful men it has generally seemed that theirs was an Age of Confusion.

  Joseph Wood Krutch

  Thoughtful, Men, Confusion

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• If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.

  Paul Johnson

  Unique, Views, Racism

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• I've been watching basketball for a long time, I'm a historian of the game. I don't know any other team that's gotten to the Finals without two All-Stars... I cannot remember thinking of it. I don't even know if it's ever happened, for a team to lose two All-Stars and still be able to make it to the Finals.

  LeBron James

  Basketball, Stars, Team

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• 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.

  Paul de Man

  Writing, Degrees, Agents

  Paul de Man (2013). “Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism”, p.152, Routledge

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• World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation.

  Richard Holbrooke

  War, World, Negotiation

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• To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

  Erich Auerbach

  Writing, Technique, Difficult

  Erich Auerbach (1957). “Mimesis”

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• the word 'justification' has itself had a chequered career over the course of many centuries of debate. As the major historian of the doctrine has noted, the word has long since ceased to mean, in ecclesial debates, what it meant for Paul himself - which is confusing, since the debates have gone on referring to Paul as though he was in fact talking about what they want to talk about. It is as though the greengrocer treated you to a long discussion of how onions are grown, and how best to cook with them, when what you had asked was how much he would charge for three of them.

  N. T. Wright

  Mean, Talking, Careers

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• When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of 'greatness.' 'Greatness,' it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the 'great' man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a 'great' man can be blamed.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Greatness, Men, Humanity

  Leo Tolstoy (2016). “War and Peace”, p.1125, First Avenue Editions

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• I went to medical school after having decided to do so somewhere between my junior and senior year at Harvard - very late. I initially wanted to be an intellectual historian.

  Eric Kandel

  Senior, School, Years

  "A Nobel Prize with help from sea slugs". Interview with Edythe McNamee and Jacque Wilson, www.cnn.com. May 14, 2013.

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• Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles places the loyalist experience and the aftermath of the American Revolution in an entirely new light. Alongside the Spirit of 1776, Jasanoff gives us the Spirit of 1783, dedicated to remaking the mighty British Empire, and then offers a stunning reinterpretation of the Loyalists' complicated role in that remaking. Her meticulously researched and superbly written account is historical revision at its finest, and it affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation.

  Sean Wilentz

  Light, Giving, Historical

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• What I notice, as a historian reading stories about so-called nature miracles, the walking on the water, or the miraculous catch of fishes, they're done especially for the insiders, for the disciples. Usually healings and exorcisms are done for people along the road, as it were. Jesus doesn't come on the water to save the fishing fleet from Capernaum, he comes on the water to save the disciples. It's a parable, dummy, it's a parable, don't you get it? If the leadership of the church takes off in a boat without Jesus, it will sink, it will get nowhere.

  John Dominic Crossan

  Jesus, Reading, Healing

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• There are a whole other range of sciences that must deal with the narrative reconstruction of the inordinately complex events of history that can occur but once in their detailed glory. And for those kinds of sciences, be it cosmology, or evolutionary biology, or geology, or palaeontology, the experimental methods, simplification, quantification, prediction and repetition of the experimental sciences don't always work. You have to go with the narrative, the descriptive methods of what? Of historians.

  Richard Lewontin

  Events, Narrative, Kind

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• Intellectuals love Jefferson and hate markets, and intellectuals write most of the books. Intellectuals often think that they should, for the benefit of mankind, act as fiduciaries for the clods who don't have to be intellectuals, and I suspect that has to do with [why historians love Jefferson and not Hamilton, even though Hamilton's vision of America's commercial future was vastly more accurate than Jefferson's].

  John Steele Gordon

  Hate, Book, Writing

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• History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.

  Ferdinand Marcos

  Writing, Should, Left

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I have not said your values are wrong. But neither are they right. They are simply judgments. Assessments. Decisions. For the most part, they are decisions made not by you, but by someone else. Your parents, perhaps. Your religion. Your teachers, historians, politicians.

  Neale Donald Walsch

  Inspirational, Teacher, Religious

  Neale Donald Walsch (2005). “The Complete Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue”, p.69, Penguin

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• Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.

  Sarah Moore Grimke

  Men, Wife, Guilt

  Sarah Moore Grimké, Mary S. Parker (1838). “Letters on the equality of the sexes, and the condition of woman: Addressed to Mary S. Parker”, p.6

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• In 325 A.D., the Roman Emperor Constantine decided to unify Rome under a single religion ... Historians still marvel at the brilliance with which Constantine converted the sun-worshipping pagans to Christianity. By fusing pagan symbols, dates, and rituals into the growing Christian tradition, he created a kind of hybrid religion that was acceptable to both parties.

  Dan Brown

  Christian, Party, Rome

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• ... we will hope that future historians will explain the morbid symptoms of present-day society as the childhood ailments of an aspiring humanity, due entirely to the excessive speed at which civilization was advancing.

  Albert Einstein

  Civilization, Childhood, Humanity

  Albert Einstein (2011). “The World As I See It”, p.18, Open Road Media

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