Historian Quotes
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The Reverend Douglas Wilson may not be a professional historian, as his detractors say, but he has a strong grasp of the essentials of the history of slavery and its relation to Christian doctrine. Indeed, sad to say, his grasp is a great deal stronger than that of most professors of American history, whose distortions and trivializations disgrace our college classrooms. And the Reverend Mr. Wilson is a fighter, especially effective in defense of Christianity against those who try to turn Jesus' way of salvation into pseudo-moralistic drivel.
Eugene Genovese
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It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.
Miguel de Cervantes
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Ultimately a historian has to put together a cohesive work. That doesn't mean that your curiosity is ever totally satisfied.
Adele Logan Alexander
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Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.
Edward Hallett Carr
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It is not without fear and trembling that a historian of religion approaches the problem of myth. This is not only because of that preliminary embarrassing question: what is intended by myth? It is also because the answers given depend for the most part on the documents selected.
Mircea Eliade
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The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.
Miguel de Cervantes
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When I meet a historian who cannot think that there have been great men, great men moreover in politics, I feel myself in the presence of a bad historian, and there are times when I incline to judge all historians by their opinion of Winston Churchill -- whether they can see that, no matter how much better the details, often damaging, of man and career become known, he still remains quite simply, a great man.
Geoffrey Elton
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The historian amputates reality.
Gaetano Salvemini
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It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality.
Norman Davies
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The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.
Barry S. Strauss
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The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
Ernest Renan
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Tides of History provides a splendid prism through which we may view the wider world of Victorian science. . . . Historians of science will have cause to heap praise on this book, but so too will the non-specialists. The author's splendid writing style, at times appropriately Puckish, makes this work an accessible and enjoyable read.
William M. Fowler