Quotes About Historians

If so, then we must conclude that scientists do not understand the meaning of their own theories and must wait for historians like Kuhn to enlighten them! Such a claim appears arrogant, to say the least, and imposes a burden of proof on Kuhn and other defenders of incommensurability that they have not met. So,

Reefs, [Charlie Vernon] points out, are nature's archives and historians. They are complex data banks that record evidence of environmental changes from millions of years ago up to the present.

Such, social historians of the future please note, were the housing conditions of Markshire in the year of grace 1952.

The idea that historians write the definitive version of something that will last for all time is less current than it used to be.

Historians partial to Kennedy see matters differently from those partial to L.B.J. Vietnam has become a point of contention in defending and criticizing J.F.K.

When historians consider the significance of the Berlin crises of the mid-20th century, I do not believe that they will record it as an incident in the encirclement of freedom. The true view, in my judgment, will be to see it rather as a major episode in the recession of communism.

I figured I would be able to rely on big-name historians whom I have yet to read and that this would be immensely pleasurable. And then I read the books. History writers should be put not in the jail but under it.

People grieve in different ways, some silently, some in anger, some in spite. Rarely does grief bring out the best in people, despite what local historians like to tell you.

How will we feel if historians of the future look back on the evangelical church of the 1990s and declare, "They fought bravely on the moral fronts of abortion and homosexual rights," while at the same time reporting that we did little to fulfill the Great Commission, and we did little to spread the aroma of grace in the world?

I didn't, but nodded intelligently, being no stranger to historians in the manic grip of discovery. It was seldom necessary to do more than nod periodically, saying "Oh, really?" or "How perfectly fascinating!" at appropriate intervals.

Noi chiamiamo grandi storici solo quelli che non soltanto hanno il pieno controllo della documentazione fattuale ottenuta mediante l'impiego dei migliori metodi critici disponibili, ma possiedono altresì la profonda penetrazione immaginativa che caratterizza i romanzieri di talento. Dopo tutto - lo ricordava molto tempo fa lo storico inglese G.M. Trevelyan - Clio era una musa.

The Gospels, written many decades after the fact, are a blend of fact and fantasy—historical fiction—and although the proportions of the blend may differ from scholar to scholar, no credible historians take them at 100 percent face value.

Leon Trotsky, Stalin's worst enemy, was far and away his most influential 20th-century interpreter, shaping the views of a generation of historians, from Isaac Deutscher onward.

I think what we should do as historians is understand. And we can have our own views about how things turned out, but I think, in making judgements, we're getting into tricky territory.

Under Lenin, hardly less than under Stalin, historians harbored critical opinions at their peril. The writing, let alone the publication, of political diaries was virtually impossible.

The amazing thing since so many variables enter into historical judgments, is not that historians disagree but that they agree as often as they do.

Reine-Marie picked up the top one and wondered, not for the first time, what the next generation of archivists and biographers would do. No one wrote letters anymore. No one had printed photographs and albums for historians, or even family members, to pore over. Everything was in a cloud and needed a password.

To this day historians of the Resistance persist in the belief that no women led Resistance networks, blatantly ignoring the work of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade," the British historian J. E. Smyth noted in 2014.

Those in power, historians have observed, often sought security in imposing order, which gave them some feeling of control, some feeling that the world still made sense.

Historians with virtual unanimity agree that the harshness toward Germany of the Paris peace treaty helped create the economic hardship, nationalistic reaction, and political chaos that fostered the rise of Adolf Hitler.

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians.

Their work, which historians later dubbed the Lavender Scare, prompted Eisenhower to sign a 1953 executive order essentially approving of the investigation and firing federal workers who were believed to be gay.

If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians. The

If we had to sum this new society up in a single word, we might describe it as feudal— but only if we were prepared for an outbreak of fainting fits among medieval historians.