31 Quotes by Robin G. Collingwood

The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

The chief business of twentieth-century philosopy is to reckon with twentieth-century history.

What a man is ashamed of is always at bottom himself; and he is ashamed of himself at bottom always for being afraid.

History is for human self-knowledge. Knowing yourself means knowing, first, what it is to be a person; secondly, knowing what it is to be the kind of person you are; and thirdly, knowing what it is to be the person you are and nobody else is. Knowing yourself means knowing what you can do; and since nobody knows what they can do until they try, the only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The value of history, then, is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.

Classical art stands for form; romantic art for content.

The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own mind.

A man ceases to be a beginner in any given science and becomes a master in that science when he has learned that ... he is going to be a beginner all his life.

Perfect Freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work, and in that work does what he wants to do.

Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue.