#historian

I'm a historian, and that freaks me out. ↗

— Mike Tyson

#historian #i #me #out

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

— James H. Breasted

#first #gave #historian #history #man

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

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence. ↗

— Richard Russo

#always #am #ancient #asked #assigned

Historians will likely give Obama credit for steering the country away from the brink of economic collapse in 2009. ↗

— Ron Fournier

#brink #collapse #country #credit #economic

All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind. ↗

— Carl L. Becker

#historians #history #age

I tried, after I wrote 'Twilight,' to read 'The Historian,' because it was the big thing that summer. But I can't read other people's vampires. If it's too close, I get upset; if it's too far away, I get upset. It just makes me very neurotic. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#away #because #big #big thing #close

Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awful ones--improve with age. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#conservatives #evolution #historians #history #progressive

There was a great historian lost in Wolverstone. He had the right imagination that knows just how far it is safe to stray from the truth and just how far to colour it so as to change its shape for his own purposes. ↗

— Rafael Sabatini

#change

It follows that the one thing we should not do to the men and women of past time, and particularly if they ghost through to us as larger than life, is to take them out of their historical contexts. To do so is to run the risk of turning them into monsters, whom we can denounce for our (frequently political) motives—an insidious game, because we are condemning in their make-up that which is likely to belong to a whole social world, the world that helped to fashion them and that is deviously reflected or distorted in them. Censure of this sort is the work of petty moralists and propagandists, not historians (p. 5). ↗

— Lauro Martines

#context #historians #history #memory #moralists