65 Quotes About Historians

And again we confront the problem of history: it's usually the powerful who get to write it.

The rate spread of EBOLA VIRUS in West Africa, is big tragedy. It is a fatal disease in the history of the world. Intensive education (formal and informal approaches) of the citizens of African can help prevent the spread. International cooperation is urgently needed to combat the EBOLA virus.

Chi si occupa di Storia si spoglia di simpatie e preconcetti. Ha un solo dovere: documentarsi e documentare. Si pone domande, scava negli archivi, se si imbatte in carte che non conosce le interroga e ne ascolta la voce, pronto a mutare parere se esse gli dicono parole nuove; infine propone risposte attendibili: non sue elucubrazioni, di cui nessuno saprebbe che fare, ma riflessioni fondate su dati inoppugnabili. Lo storico non ha sentimenti né inclinazioni. Ragiona.

In the history of the world, we have left our footprints by our unique stories.

History, too, has a penchant for giving birth to itself over and over again, and those whom it appoints agents of change and progress do not always accept their destinies willingly.

I have been reading history all my life, and am sharply aware that I know very little. I have an exaggerated respect for historians--certain historians; they seem to me grounded in a way that most of us are not, possessed of an extra sense by virtue of access to times and places when things were done differently. They have--can have--heightened perception.

It is the vice of the journalist, I once wrote, to think that history can always be reduced to experience, and of the scholar to think that experience can always be reduced to history. History and experience are far more frequently out of sync, or running on parallel tracks.

That may sound contradictory, but I don’t think that we can do without an idea of truth, even if we know that we are generating hypotheses and interpretations. The idea is to inspire the quest, not insist upon an answer or promise an assured outcome. It’s a utopian project. The subject is not that important. It’s just a pathway into the problems.

Indeed, a parallel history of Europe could be written which viewed family life and regular work as the essential Continental motor of civilization. Then war and revolution would need to be seen by historians as startling, sick departures from that norm of a kind that require serious explanation, rather than viewing periods of gentle introversy as mere tiresome interludes before the next thrill-packed bloodbath.