Samuel E. Morison

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#child #distorted #history #knows #lenses

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#believes #every #historian #professional #speaks

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#define #dissension #everyone #starts #truth

Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#circumstances #common #common sense #historical #i

I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#i #nothing #novel #offer #revolutionary

If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#beyond #heard #hopes #lecturer #public

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#countries #does #expect #expected #free

Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#historical #history #hitherto #important #point

So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#causes #coming #cultivated #essential #experience

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#decisions #force #his #historian #less