Historian Quotes - Page 29

• Most historians accept that Egypt was a cradle of civilization, and that many cultural idioms and traditions come from there. What has yet to be understood, however, is the manner in which Egypt inherited its cultural elements from the lands of the North-West. This fact is not known today because of the threat it poses to Rome and London, the Vatican and Crown, and to all those who have profited from the suppression of knowledge.

  Michael Tsarion

  Egypt, Rome, Land

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• I only became a novelist because I thought I had missed my chance to become a historian.

  Hilary Mantel

  Novelists, Chance

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• Virtually every subject is most effectively learned directly from the greatest thinkers, historians, artists, philosophers, scientists, prophets and their original works. Great works inspire greatness. Mediocre or poor works inspire mediocre or poor learning. The great accomplishments of humanity are the key to quality education.

  Oliver DeMille

  Artist, Greatness, Keys

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• Historians are dangerous people. They are capable of upsetting everything.

  Nikita Khrushchev

  People, Upset, Dangerous

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• Every man should write a brief history of his life: his parentage, his birth, his religion, when he was baptized and by whom, when ordained, what to, and by whom-give a brief sketch of all his missions and of all his official acts and the dealings of God with him. Then if he were to die and the historians wished to publish his history, they would have something to go by.

  Wilford Woodruff

  Writing, Men, Giving

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• Future historians will be able to study at the Jimmy Carter Library, the Gerald Ford Library, the Ronald Reagan Library, and the Bill Clinton Adult Bookstore.

  George Carlin

  Library, Adults, Bookstores

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• What does anyone really know about the impetus to go to war? And so much is uncovered in hindsight. And there are aspects of even past wars that are only coming out now. Historians discover letters here, notes there, and look very carefully at different aspects of not only any conflict but any great historical event.

  Jacqueline Winspear

  War, Past, Historical

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• It is up to the historians, not politicians, to judge what happened in the past. Politicians look into the future.

  Egemen Bag?s

  Past, Judging, Politician

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• As a historian I refuse to recognize an epochal boundary before the fact.

  Wladyslaw Bartoszewski

  Facts, Boundaries, Refuse

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them.

  E. M. Forster

  Writing, Mountain, Literature

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• Reason is an historian, but the passions are actors.

  Antoine Rivarol

  Passion, Actors, Reason

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• What the art historians had forgotten is that in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Indian art, they never painted shadows. Why did they paint shadows in European art? Shadows are because of optics. Optics need shadows and strong light. Strong light makes the deepest shadows. It took me a few years to realize fully that the art historians didn't grasp that. There are a lot of interesting new things, ideas, pictures.

  David Hockney

  Art, Strong, Light

  Interview with Michael Govan, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 5, 2013.

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• A historian has many duties... the first is not to slander; the second is not to bore

  Voltaire

  Firsts, Duty, Slander

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• We're historians and above all want to write about what was. Our book doesn't deal with legacies. It also wasn't our goal to destroy a legend. We consider Walesa to be a national symbol. He led Solidarity and remains an icon. But he also worked with the secret police under the name Bolek. The truth isn't always simply black and white.

  Slawomir Cenckiewicz

  Book, Writing, Black And White

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I never intended to be a historian of religion. My aim was to become a professor of English Literature in a university, but I had a series of absolute career disasters and found myself making television programs about the nature of religion and about Christian history and started to discover about other religious traditions, and that was an absolute eye-opener for me.

  Karen Armstrong

  Christian, Religious, Eye

  Interview with Austin Allen, bigthink.com. November 16, 2009.

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• I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes.

  William Saroyan

  Clever, War, Men

  William Saroyan (1936). “Inhale & exhale”, Books for Libraries

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• Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

  Samuel Johnson

  Exercise, Men, Hands

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Edmond Malone (1824). “The life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., comprehending an account of his studies, and numerous works, in chronological order: a series of his epistolary correspondence and conversations with many eminent persons; and various original pieces of his composition, never before published; the whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a century during which he flourished”, p.373

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• You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

  Ken Burns

  Essentials, Needs, Way

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• Ironically, the more intensive and far-reaching a historian's research, the greater the difficulty of citation. As the mountain of material grows, so does the possibility of error.

  Doris Kearns Goodwin

  Errors, Mountain, Doe

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• Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their libraries open in the evening.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  People, Library, Tiny

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• Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before. Herodotus, historian If I had to name a driving force in my life, I'd name passion every time.

  Anita Roddick

  Giving Up, Passion, Men

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• If historians are not skeptical, they are nothing.

  Geoffrey Elton

  Skeptical, Ifs

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• It has been said that the historian is the avenger, and that standing as a judge between the parties and rivalries and causes of bygone generations he can lift up the fallen and beat down the proud, and by his exposures and his verdicts, his satire and his moral indignation, can punish unrighteousness, avenge the injured or reward the innocent.

  Herbert Butterfield

  Party, Judging, Rewards

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• When I was released by the Americans I read historian Trevor Roper's book, 'The Last Days of Hitler'. Throughout the book like a red line, runs an eyewitness report by Hanna Reitsch about the final days in the bunker. I never said it. I never wrote it. I never signed it. It was something they invented. Hitler died with total dignity.

  Hanna Reitsch

  Running, Book, Finals

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• I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.

  David Ebershoff

  Mother, Art, Memories

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