Quotes by Historians - Page 4

When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence of literature implies that it cannot be replaced by non-literature
Tzvetan Todorov
Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?
Andrew Lang
Visibility is a trap.
Michel Foucault
The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272)
Victor Davis Hanson
I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it.
Wallace Stegner
Having had nothing, I will not settle for crumbs.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Often ignored by civil rights historians, a number of campaigns led to trials and even convictions throughout the South. These cases, many virtually unknown, broke with Southern tradition and fractured the philosophical and political foundations of white supremacy by challenging the relationship between sexual domination and racial equality.
Danielle L. McGuire
...the Men Who Knew came out of the woodwork.
Rebecca Solnit
The claim at the heart of this book has been carefully researched by several generations of scholars and is orthodox in academic circles, if not beyond. Christians under the Roman Empire were neither constantly persecuted nor martyred in huge numbers for their faith. They were prosecuted from time to time for alleged sedition, holding illegal meetings or refusing to sacrifice to the emperor. They were, like other convicts, sometimes tortured and executed in horrible ways. They seem to have been regarded by many Romans with distaste as a particularly silly superstition. But Christian stories of thousands of individual and mass martyrdoms over centuries have at best a limited basis in historical fact, and in many cases are sheer fiction.
Teresa Morgan
Recreational sex is thus supposed to function as the glue holding a human couple together while they cooperate in rearing their helpless baby.
Jared Diamond
But the largest number of primate species--thirty-four--have a promiscuous system in which females routinely associate and copulate with multiple males.
Jared Diamond
Jesus was a penniless teacher who wandered about the dusty sun-bit country of Judea, living upon casual gifts of food; yet he is always represented clean, combed, and sleek, in spotless raiment, erect, and with something motionless about him as though he was gliding through the air. This alone has made him unreal and incredible to many people who cannot distinguish the core of the story from the ornamental and unwise additions of the unintelligently devout.
H.G.Wells
Only little boys and old men sneer at love.
Louis Auchincloss
You do not know what is better before you have tried what is worse.
Thomas Rathsach Strange
With every innovation comes a new abuse.
David V. Kimball
The principle victims of British policies are Unpeople—those whose lives are deemed worthless, expendable in the pursuit of power and commercial gain. They are the modern equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation.
Mark Curtis
And that's the point; not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their week ones.
Jill Lepore
Structurally, by reason of their smaller numbers and greater resources, virtually all ruling classes enjoy an advantage over the ruled in their capacity for collective action. Their internal lines of communication are more compact; their wealth offers an all-purpose medium of power, convertible into any number of forms of domination; their intelligence systems scan the political landscape from a greater height. More numerous and more dispersed, less equipped materially, less armed culturally, subordinate classes always tend, in the sociologist Michael Mann’s phrase, to be ‘organisationally outflanked
Perry Anderson
Great empires are not maintained by timidity.
Tacitus
Where there is power, there is resistance.
Michel Foucault
In fighting its war, the Ministry of the Interior has resorted to a novel tactic–marriage. No Saudi official will admit on the record that the Kingdom’s terrorist problem might boil down to sexual frustration, but if a social system bans hot-blooded young men from contact with the opposite sex in their most hot-blooded years, perhaps it is hardly surprising that some of them channel this frustration into violence. One cornerstone of the extremist rehab program is to get the “beneficiaries,” as they are called, settled down with a wife as soon as possible. The Ministry of the Interior pays each unmarried beneficiary 60,000 riyals (some $18,000), the going rate for a dowry, or bride price. The family arranges a marriage, and whenever he can, Prince Mohammed turns up for the wedding.When Khaled Al-Hubayshi was released from Al-Haier prison early in 2007, he wasted no time finding himself a bride at government expense.
Robert Lacey
To the Indians it seemed that these Europeans hated everything in nature - the living forests and their birds and beasts, the grassy grades, the water, the soil, the air itself.
Dee Brown
The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.
Tony Judt
The idea that in prehistoric times a man would spend his life hunting only for the benefit of his own wife and children, who were dependent solely upon his hunting prowess for survival, is simply a projection of 1950s marital norms onto the past.
Stephanie Coontz
We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both.
Donald Worster
What these thinkers, chroniclers, and interpreters have written about, how they have theorized their scholarly endeavors, and their approaches and methodologies have inevitably been informed and shaped by the times in which they existed.
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie
Before Sutter, native people had heeded the cycle of the seasons, time was infinite, and life's rhythms were unchanging. Now, for at least part of their lives, some Indians were wedded to a concept that proclaimed that time was limited and that it had economic value. The clang of Sutter's bell announced that time was money, that it marched onward, and that it waited for no man, including Indians in the 1840s.
Albert L. Hurtado
There were always historians who said [historical Jesus research] can not be done because of historical problems. There were always theologians who said it should not be done because of theological objections. And there were always scholars who said the former when they meant the latter.
John Dominic Crossan
It is impossible to avoid the suspicion that historical Jesus research is a very safe place to do theology and call it history, to do autobiography and call it biography.
John Dominic Crossan
[C]ontemporary Jesus research is still involved in textual looting, in attacks on the mound of Jesus tradition that do not begin from any overall stratigraphy, do not explain why this or that item was chosen for emphasis over some other one, and give the distinct impression that the researcher knew the result before beginning the search.
John Dominic Crossan
When the big German guns at Calais fired on us, we realized, we had been strafed by Spitfires from the RAF during working up exercises for the invasion, accidentally attacked by the USN off Normandy after D-Day and shelled by the British Army in the English Channel. It was about time the enemy took a few shots at us too!"Jack Harold, RCNVR, SignalmanHMCS TRENTONIANChapter 9, White Ensign Flying -The Story of HMCS TRENTONIAN.
Roger Litwiller
I became a Libertarian as a result of researching WWII and the Holocaust. Individual liberty is sacred.
A.E. Samaan
Past is PrologueThis book was written observing the premise that the seeds of Holocaust denial take root and prosper with misinformation. Clarity and transparency are imperative, as they leave no room for denial theories that would deprive the victims justice, or rob the living of a future. Generations of historians have enthusiastically gone about their craft knowing full well that 'he who owns the past, owns the future'. Improperly documented history, or more precisely, fraudulent versions of history not only deprive the victims of pasts injustices due recognition of their suffering, but also rob the living of a fair chance at a future free from the dangers of repeating past injustices.
A.E. Samaan
In the 10th century, Baghdad instituted a licensing exam that all doctors had to take before practicing as physicians
Firas Alkhateeb
Until quite recently women's histories were largely overlooked but in the wake of feminism there has been increasing interest in retrieving them.
Alison Weir
For fourteen years Wiliam Walker alias Brown alias Shields alias Swallow alias Waldon alias Todd alias Watson had been a major irritant to British authorities on both sides of the world. To the London police he was an accomplished thief. To the colonial government in Van Diemen's Land, he was a clever and determined escaper; he had stolen one of its vessels and caused much embarrassment by making it back to England not once but twice, one of only a handful of runaways to do so. To these skills of theft and evasion must be added outstanding seamanship, a glib tongue, extraordinary resourcefulness and a capacity for leadership. Among his more admirable attributes his loyalty to his family should also not be forgotten. To the convicts of Macquarie Harbour and Port Arthur he was a living legend, tangible proof that escape from the island prison was possible. By any standards, he was a remarkable man...
Warwick Hirst
But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others.
Polybius
But Khair did not need such proof of her husband's love for her. Over and over again,James had risked everything for her. Most relationships in life can survive - or not - without being put to any really crucial, fundamental test. It was James's fate for his love to be tested not once, but four times....At each stage he could easily have washed his hands off his teenage lover. Each time he chose to remain true to her.That, not the words of any will, was the evidence she could cling onto.
William Dalrymple
Marx wrote that 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.' This was witty but far from true. History is never repeated, but it borrows, steals, echoes and commandeers the past to create a hybrid, something unique out of the ingredients of past and present.
Simon Sebag Montefiore
... the very appearance of the word ‘‘oriental’’ as a serious geographic or cultural term triggers alarm bells for any American academic. The late Edward Said’s Orientalism argued that the word ‘‘oriental’’ is a fundamentally pejorative term for certain parts of the non-Western world, not only indicating that they are inferior but also justifying Western colonization or domination of them.
Peter A. Lorge
The past is the occupational realm of historians—their daily work—and scholars have debated what their stance toward these social issues should be. As citizens and professionals, historians may naturally form a desire, as Carl Becker puts it, “to do work in the world.” That is, they might aspire to write history that is not only of scholarly value but also has a salutary impact in society. Becker defines the appropriate impact and the historian’s proper role as “correcting and rationalizing for common use Mr. Everyman’s mythological adaption of what actually happened.”That process is never simple, however, when the subject involves divisions so deep that they led to civil wars. One issue that inevitably leads to controversy is the extent to which history involves moral judgment. Another is the power of myths, exerting their influence on society and acting in opposition to the findings of historical research [190—91].
Paul D. Escott
But he had expressed to Mme. du Chatelet the hope that a way out might lie in applying philosophy to history, and endeavoring to trace, beneath the flux of political events, the history of the human mind. 'Only philosophers should write history,' he said. 'In all nations, history is disfigured by fable, till at last philosophy comes to enlighten man; and when it does finally arrive in the midst of darkness, it finds the human mind so blinded centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it; it finds ceremonies, facts and monuments, heaped up to prove lies.' 'History,' he concludes, 'is after all nothing but a pack of tricks which we play upon the dead;' we transform the past to suit our wishes for the future, and in the upshot 'history proves that anything can be proved by history.
Will Durant
...we can endure neither our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them.
Livy
History is indeed stranger than fiction. The twists and turns of human history are too outlandish for to be believable in any work of fiction.
A.E. Samaan
The crisis of history in France, is a crisis of social bond, a crisis of citizenship. A citizen is the heir of a past more or less mythified, but he makes his own, whatever his personal genealogy. Today, under the pretext that the country has undergone considerable changes, some would like to transform the past in order to adopt it to the new face of France. Nothing, however, will make the past anything other than what it was. To pretend to change history is a totalitarian project: One who has control of the past has control over the future, one who has control over the present has control over the past, as George Orwell wrote in 1984.
Jean Sevillia
Knowledge can never imprison you, but you can be captive to your ignorance.
A.E. Samaan
We should have realized it sooner, at least my father should have, that there was no coming back. Not in September when the riots died down, not in October when the subcontinent still lay in shock, not even in November as he had hoped and promised us. Lahore was now lost forever
Aanchal Malhotra
What was it like to live amidst such machines, to be familiar with them, to have them shape one's earliest intuitions about machinery: how it works, what it does, how it compares to living creatures?
Jessica Riskin
We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.
Margaret MacMillan
Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.
Edward Hallett Carr
The person who expects to understand history must submerge himself in it, must get rid of patriotism, as well as bitterness. And especially in studying a historic life that consists in insecurity must the historian rid himself of all insecurity. He must accept the totality of the data in all their fullness, the noble with the paltry, thinking of how the two interlock.
Américo Castro
Court life for a queen of France at that time was, however, stultifyingly routine. Eleanor found that she was expected to be no more than a decorative asset to her husband, the mother of his heirs and the arbiter of good taste and modesty.
Alison Weir
And shall we at last become the victims of our own abominable lust of gain? Forbid it, Heaven." Washington himself could be a hard driving businessman, yet he found the rapacity of many vendors unconscionable. As he told George Mason, he thought it the intent of the speculators, various tribes of money makers and stock jobbers of all denominations, to continue the war for their own private emolument, without considering that their avarice and thirst for gain must plunge everything in one common ruin.
Ron Chernow
The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.
Noam Chomsky
I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis
Antony Beevor
Thus the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new master, and whispering in his ears sinister prophecies of coming catastrophe.In this way arose feudal Socialism; half lamentation, half lampoon; half echo of the past, half menace of the future, at times by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart's core, but always ludicrous in its effects, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
Karl Marx
And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
Stacy Schiff
Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.
Simon Schama
And in the absence of facts, myth rushes in, the kudzu of history.
Stacy Schiff
He was always acting, always enveloping himself in artificiality, perhaps to conceal the volcano within.
Barbara W. Tuchman