13 Quotes by Marc Bloch

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.

No doubt they thought that by allowing themselves to become martyrs to their nerves they were giving proof of a fine stoicism, just as by living in a continual rush they produced in their own minds an illusion of activity.

Similarly, when it is not the past that we are studying, but some set of phenomena relating to a principle still active, we expect to be told whenever a new piece of evidence may emerge, in the light of which it is quite possible that the whole elaborate structure of our conclusions will have to be changed.