historian quotes

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 Churchillwhether 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.

- Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton
  Political History, ch.2.

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in historya plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. Those harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another, as wave follows upon wave; only one real fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations.Only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

- H(erbert) A(lbert) L(aurens) Fisher
  History of Europe, introduction.

The historian must have a third quality as well: some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead.

- E(dward) M(organ) Forster
  Abinger Harvest,'Captain Edward Gibbon'.

No mancanbe a politicianexcept hefirst be anhistorian or a traveller; for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician.

-James Harrington
  The Commonwealth of Oceana.

A historian is often onlya journalist facing backwards.

- Karl Kraus
Aphorism collected in Heinrich Fischer (ed) Beim Wort genommen (1955). Translated by Harry Zohn in Half-truths and one-and-a-half truths (1986).

Although Iama futuristtoday, if Idon'tchangetomorrow, I will be a historian.

- Frank also known as  'DrTomorrow' Ogden
  Ogdenisms: The Frank Ogden Quote Book.

The historyof theVictorian age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historianignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art.

- (Giles) Lytton Strachey
  EminentVictorians, preface.

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.

- BarbaraW(ertheim) Tuchman
Practising History,'The Houses of Research'.