#historians

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

Among those people lucky enough, if you will, to have actually been brought to trial as a political prisoner, several historians have said there has not been one acquittal since the Bolshevik Revolution. ↗

— Barbara Amiel

#actually #among #been #bolshevik #brought

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write. ↗

— Alexander Downer

#historians #knows #well #will #write

In taking action we must remember that the things which are happening to the Jews today are but a part of the general disintegration anticipated by philosophers and historians of different schools for almost half a century. ↗

— Louis Finkelstein

#almost #anticipated #century #different #different schools

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#conception #dead #experience #experiences #gain

All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small. ↗

— Henry Louis Gates

#examples #footnotes #generalize #historian #historians

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

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

God cannot alter the past, though historians can. ↗

— Samuel Butler

#alter #cannot #god #historians #past

A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial; free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear, resentment or affection; and faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history the preserver of great actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future. ↗

— B.R. Ambedkar

#idealism #faith