16 Quotes by Samuel E. Morison

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses.

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer.

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.