4 Quotes by Geoffrey Elton

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is the mess we call life reduced to some order. pattern and possibly purpose.

The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation.

History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of view, belief in simple solutions, lack of balance of mind, absence of an imaginative understanding.

If historians are not skeptical, they are nothing.