#historian

Study men, not historians. ↗

— Harry S. Truman

#men #study

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians. ↗

— Horace Walpole

#circumstances #exalt #historians #how #improve

So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on. ↗

— A. B. Yehoshua

#certain #deliberation #dot #end #go

Oh, my dear Vimes, history changes all the time. It is constantly being re-examined and re-evaluated, otherwise how would we be able to keep historians occupied? We can't possibly allow people with their sort of minds to walk around with time on their hands. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#history #change

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian. ↗

— James H. Breasted

#first #gave #historian #history #man

Events are moving so fast and what in one moment seems impossible, the next is happening. I'm sure historians will, in time, provide theories and analysis, but for now I think most of us simply want the tide stemmed. ↗

— Lucy Powell

#events #fast #happening #historians #i

But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general public. ↗

— Bernice Johnson Reagon

#doing #general #general public #historian #i

No, this customary aim of research by excavators is completely foreign to the historical work with which I am occupied... my sole and only aim is to be able to establish a historical fact, on which I disagree with some eminent historians and geographers. ↗

— Heinrich Schliemann

#aim #am #completely #customary #disagree

Ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. ↗

— Lytton Strachey

#clarifies #first #highest #historian #ignorance

Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, the result has largely been not to demythologize the past, but merely to dehumanize and depersonalize it. As Roger Mudd has pointed out, 'Too many of today's historians [and biographers] ... seem to have forgotten that the writing of history is a literary art. ↗

— Markham Shaw Pyle

#history #writing #art