Quotes About Historian

A learned historian declared to me of a contemporary, that the latter had appropriated his researches; he might, indeed, and he had a right to refer to the same originals; but if his predecessor had opened the sources for him, gratitude is not a silent virtue.

Every historian, whether he is a Christian or not, ought to take account of this strange fact—that a certain Jesus, a man who lived in the first century in Palestine, was actually convinced, as He looked out upon the men who thronged about Him, that He would one day sit on the judgment-seat of God and be their judge and the judge and ruler of all the world.

As historian David Hackett Fischer explains: "Valid empirical proof requires not merely the establishment of possibility, but an estimate of probability.

I am part of a broad social movement. Ten years ago, it would have unimaginable for some random Dutch historian to go viral when talking about taxes. Yet here we are.

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

I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.

I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

A historian tries to understand what happened, why it happened, what was the context, who did what, and what assumptions led them to act as they did. A historian customarily displays a certain diffidence about trying to influence events, knowing that unanticipated developments often lead to unintended consequences.

The material in this book was compiled from tape recordings, from the rich store of memory of J. B. West, and from his extensive personal files. To prepare for interviewing Mr. West, I read the following books, as a background on White House history. I am also grateful to James R. Ketchum, a true White House historian, for his assistance in research and preparation of the manuscript.

The following year, Navarre, not surprisingly, was cashiered from his post in the German section of the Deuxième Bureau, the French army's intelligence agency. "A man of the utmost daring and rebelliousness," he "positively relished being in hot water—wonderful to serve under, impossible to command," the British historian M.R.D. Foot later noted.

According to the Greek historian Laonicus Chalkokondylas, the fall of Constantinople was seen in Rome as revenge for the fall of Troy, and Kritoboulos has Sultan Mehmet taking the same view in his visit to Troy in 1462.

In so many multifarious ways, John Henry Newman has been a blessing to the Church. How appropriate, therefore, that the Church has now conferred a great blessing upon Newman by raising him to the altar. The beatified Newman is in the Presence of the Beatific Vision. He has achieved the only goal for which life is worth living. As such, praise should make way for prayers. Blessed John Henry Newman, historian, theologian, philosopher, and poet, pray for us.

I had gone with Henri Pirenne to Stockholm; we had scarcely arrived, when he said to me: 'What shall we go to see first? It seems that there is a new city hall here. Let's start there.' Then, as if to ward of my surprise, he added: 'If I were an antiquarian, I would have eyes only for old stuff, but I am a historian. Therefore, I love life.

He was, in the words of one modern historian, 'the last great pagan king of Anglo-Saxon England'.

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

A historian is a risk-terrified prophet.

Hay irreverentes, y también historiadores, que sostienen que la virginidad de María es un error de traducción. Y puede que sí. Pero ya sea en arameo, zendo, jónico, eólico o ático, haya sido virgen o mujer normalmente sexuada, María es sobre todo una imagen poética, digna de parir a esa prometedora metáfora llamada Jesús (no olvidemos que expulsó del templo a los mercaderes).

Ida was a natural historian who knew how to throw in enough fiction to keep up dramtic tension. And she was replete with details, like a big fat colorful nineteenth-century historical novel, inching forward slowly....Ida's narrative line, like her waistline, was ample.

Good historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the question: Why? the historian also asks the question: Whither?

He called him by his name, no doubt, but the divine historian thought not fit to record it, for, because he refused to raise up the name of the dead, he deserved not to have his name preserved to future ages in this history. Providence

It is to be remarked that, during this period, nearly all the women at the Court of France were called either Jeanne or Marguerite and the men Philippe, Charles or Louis, which does not make the historian's task any the easier and has frequently given rise to confusion.

the first historical information on the Templars is provided by a Frankish historian, Guillaume de Tyre, who wrote between 1175 and 1185.

Starting with religion, as the British historian Hugh Thomas noted in his monumental study The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870, "There is no record in the seventeenth century of any preacher who, in any sermon, whether in the Cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux, or in a Presbyterian meeting house in Liverpool, condemned the trade in black slaves.

Historian Bernard DeVoto later called 1846 "the year of decision." Not all the decisions proved wise.