Quotes About Historians

President Obama had a few historians at the White House for a couple of dinners. I was lucky enough to be one of those asked, and he was very interested in Ronald Reagan, and I came away feeling that.

Most legal scholars and historians agree that the Antiquities Act does not give the president the authority to revoke previous national monument designations, but a president can change the boundaries of a national monument.

I hope that not only my documentaries, but everybody's documentaries, last. It will really confuse historians in the next century, because they'll have, in addition to all the print material, they'll have all these pictures to look at.

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

Having learned to write news, I now distrust newspapers as a source of information, and I am often surprised by historians who take them as primary source for knowing what really happened. I think newspapers should be read for information about how contemporaries construed events, rather than for reliable knowledge of events themselves.

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me.

Many historians still cite Lloyd George's previously quoted comment that the European nations 'stumbled into war' as evidence that no nation was entirely free of guilt for the conflict, but a careful analysis of German plans and ambitions in the pre-war years by the German historian Fritz Fischer confirms the popular opinion that the root causes of the Great War were German militarism and political ambition - and that these roots had been established for some time.

repressive bigotry was a hallmark of the various Reformations, and the relative silence on these matters by generations of historians is shameful. Of course, there has been full coverage of the many religious wars stemming from the Reformations, and of the savagery these involved – but these were wars, not matters of domestic policy.

Grant later boasted, with some justice, that Hamilton Fish was the best secretary of state in fifty years. While historians have tended to mock Grant's cabinet as a bunch of mediocrities—and Borie certainly qualified as such—it was actually weighted with former congressmen, senators, governors, and judges. It had figures of real distinction (Fish), Radical Republicans (Boutwell, Creswell), men of exceptional intellect (Hoar)

Historians, whose profession is to study the past, are as wary as scientists of the idea that events unfold in a manner that can be predicted.

It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it.

All those "why" questions are rooted in culture, which is to say, in ethical beliefs. I emphasize the point not to denigrate the achievements of scientists, but only to remind that natural science cannot by itself fathom the sources of the crisis it has identified, for the sources lie not in the nature that scientists study but in the human nature and, especially, in the human culture that historians and other humanists have made their study.

Historians are trained to look for personal biography in every idea, no matter how scientifically objective it is supposed to be, and to look for the influence of contemporary opinion on the rise and fall of scientific theories.

You'd have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story, but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don't make movies we do.

Historians now estimate that as many as 20,000 people abandoned the city during the fever.

Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.

Historians who write about families are usually feminists who think in terms of gender relations.

[H]istorians have powerful imaginations, which are essential and dangerous.

In Britain, and in many parts of her former Empire, the blame for the death toll is generally laid on the incompetence and callousness of the Great War generals, especially the British generals. In France, they blame their politicians; in Germany, historians blame the Kaiser.

His expertise took in anything manufactured in the old gross way from inorganic materials. He was totally lost with modern bacterial electronics, where computers were grown, not made. His work was greatly valued by a few historians of science, and virtually unknown to everyone else

These horror stories about Hamilton have been regurgitated for two centuries and are now engraved on the memories of historians and readers alike. Unfortunately, these vignettes often cruelly misrepresent Hamilton and have done no small damage to his reputation. Jefferson understood very well the power of laying down a paper trail.

I missed that one,' Henryson said. 'The war, I mean.' 'Don't worry,' Snipes said. 'Another one's always coming down the pike. That's something all your historians and philosophers agree on. A feller over in Germany looks to be ready to set a match to Europe soon enough, and quick as they snuff him out there'll be another to take his place.

Crear personajes que matan a los de los historiadores es privilegio de los novelistas, El motivo es que los historiadores evocan a simples fantasmas, mientras que los novelistas crean a personas de carne y hueso.

Tudor historians were fond of reminding their readers of the horrors of the Wars of the Roses, recounting how the realm had been plunged into the vicious civil war over a disputed crown that lasted more than thirty years.