21 Quotes by Edward Hallett Carr

History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger’s slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.

The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

I am reminded of Housman’s remark that ‘accuracy is a duty, not a virtue.’ To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function.

What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization.

It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.

History is preoccupied with fundamental processes of change. If you are allergic to these processes, you abandon history and take cover in the social sciences. Today anthropology, sociology, etc, flourish. History is sick. But then our society too is sick.

Good historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the question: Why? the historian also asks the question: Whither?

Good historians... have the future in their bones.

Progress in human affairs, whether in science or in history or in society, has come mainly through the bold readiness of human beings not to confine themselves to seeking piecemeal improvements in the way things are done, but to present fundamental challenges in the name of reason to the current way of doing things and to the avowed or hidden assumptions on which it rests.