Quotes from Marc Bloch

The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Somos os vencidos provisórios de um injusto destino.

The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings.

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.

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

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

Let us guard against stripping our science of its share of poetry.

No doubt they thought that by allowing themselves to become martyrs to their nerves they were giving proof of a fine stoicism, just as by living in a continual rush they produced in their own minds an illusion of activity.

Para quien no sea un tonto de marca mayor, todas las ciencias son interesantes, pero cada sabio solo encuentra una cuyo cultivo le divierte. Descubrirla para consagrarse a ella es propiamente lo q se llama vocación

Le doute méthodique est d'ordinaire le signe d'une bonne santé mentale : c'est pourquoi des soldats harassés, au coeur trouble ne pouvaient le pratiquer

When it is a question of ascertaining whether or not some human act has really taken place, [historians] cannot be too painstaking. If they proceed to the reasons for that act, they are content with the merest appearance, ordinarily founded upon one of those maxims of common-place psychology which are neither more nor less true than their opposites.

Similarly, when it is not the past that we are studying, but some set of phenomena relating to a principle still active, we expect to be told whenever a new piece of evidence may emerge, in the light of which it is quite possible that the whole elaborate structure of our conclusions will have to be changed.

Understanding,' in all honesty, is a word pregnant with difficulties, but also with hope.

Detrás de los rasgos sensibles del paisaje, de las herramientas o de las máquinas, detrás de los escritos aparentemente más fríos, y de las instituciones aparentemente más distanciadas de los q las han creado, la historia quiere aprender a los hombres

No hay menos belleza en una exacta ecuación q en una frase precisa. Pero cada ciencia tiene su propio lenguaje estético

Defender la alegría como una trinchera, defenderla del escándalo y la rutina, de la miseria y los miserables, de las ausencias transitorias y las definitivas

How pleasant it is', says the Roman poet, 'to listen to a storm from the safe shelter of the shore.

La incomprensión del presente nace fatalmente de la ignorancia del pasado

Comparez ces deux journaux quasi homonymes : The Times et Le Temps. Les intérêts, dont ils suivent, l'un et l'autre, les ordres, sont de nature semblable ; leurs publics, des deux côtés, aussi éloignés des masses populaires ; leur impartialité, également suspecte. Qui lit le premier, cependant, en saura toujours, sur le monde, tel qu'il est, infiniment plus que les abonnés du second. Même