Quotes About Historians

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.

The lawyers and historians concurred in teaching, that the Imperial authority was held, not by the delegated commission, but by the irrevocable resignation of the senate; that the emperor was freed from the restraint of civil laws, could command by his arbitrary will the lives and fortunes of his subjects, and might dispose of the empire as of his private patrimony. [

Good historians...have the future in their bones

When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.

As you may recall, Truman was extremely unpopular when he finally left Washington in 1953, thanks largely to the Korean War. Today, however, he is thought to have been a solidly good president, a 'Near Great' even, in the terminology of those surveys of historians they do every now and then.

I don't see why a book shouldn't be intellectually sound, entertaining, and fun to read. Historians who write academic history, which is unreadable, are basically wasting their time.

We cannot leave history entirely to nonclinical observers and to professional historians.

Truman is now seen as a near-great president because he put in place the containment doctrine boosted by the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and NATO, which historians now see as having been at the center of American success in the cold war.

As historians write more and more histories, it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that other historians read their histories and then make synthesis, and certain things just get forgotten and left out and neglected.

Hayden] white argues instead for histories that avoid narrative closure and that highlight the contingency of the past ... He points especially to chronicle - a form marked by a lack of closure - as a useful alternative to the narrative. In a chronicle, historians offer an interpretation of the past but simply end the account when they reach the present.

Historians and economists are very good at creating and perpetuating myths that justify increasing the power placed in the hands of government.

Even though a few Western historians have speculated about international Communist involvements in the Vietnam War, no primary source or personal accounts had been available for their research.

As the historians Jung Chang and Jon Halliday point out, "It was having China as a secure rear and supply depot that made it possible for the Vietnamese to fight twenty-five years and beat first the French and then the Americans.

Historians have generally described the coming of industrialization in terms of changes in paid work. The transformation has been framed as one from a community of comparatively independent producers to a class of wage workers.

It is a fact that we historians are interested in what is partly a reflection of ourselves, perhaps a part of ourselves we would rather not examine except through the medium of scholarship; it is also true that as we steep ourselves in our interests, they become more and more a part of us.

NICHOLAS GALING DRESSED FOR THE HISTORIANS' debate with all of his usual care. He wore green, for spring, with a waistcoat embroidered with jonquils. In deference to the gravity of the occasion, the green was dark, and he wore no lace.

There are all kinds of historians and scholars who say that Brutus could have been a son of Caesar. That's definitely a possibility. He's a generation younger than Caesar.

Historians can set up all the conceptual walls they want, but they should not be surprised when medieval people pass through them freely, like ghosts. Nonetheless,

It needs to be stated at this point that the ideal of a propertyless Golden Age is a myth—the fruit of longing rather than memory—because historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists concur that there never was a time or place when all productive assets were collectively owned. All living creatures, from the most primitive to the most advanced, in order to survive must enjoy assured access to food and, to secure such access, claim ownership of territory.

Well, then I started to find out that it wasn't all paranoid. The Illuminati really was a very influential organization in its time. I am extremely skeptical that it still exists. But it did play a much larger role in the 18th century than most conventional historians realize. The more you look at it, the more intriguing connections leap out at you.

Perhaps, in the year 2598, some historians will claim that there never were "hippies," while others will claim that hippies existed but didn't actually smoke marijuana, and a third group will insist that the hippies, always stoned out of the skulls on belladonna, ran through the streets attacking innocent bystanders.

Studying history is for tourists - polite, tidy people with clean desks and clean consciences. Making history is for people willing to get their hands dirty, to make mistake and lie when necessary, so that someday historians can sit quietly at their desks and act shocked.

Though historians occasionally try their hand at prophecy (without notable success), the study of history aims above all to make us aware of possibilities we don't normally consider. Historians study the past not in order to repeat it, but in order to be liberated from it.

Struck by the complete lack of logic in any of their claims, I initially dismissed the Holocaust deniers and their theories out of hand. Then two respected historians suggested that I take a closer, more systematic look.