Geoffrey Elton Quotes

Sir Geoffrey Rudolph Elton was a German-born British political and constitutional historian, specialising in the Tudor period. He taught at Clare College, Cambridge, and was the Regius Professor of Modern History there from 1983 to 1988. Wikipedia

✵ 17. August 1921 – 3. December 1994

Geoffrey Elton: 4 quotes0 likes

Famous Geoffrey Elton Quotes

“[On postmodernism] We historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories – even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction – can prove fatal.”

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, Return to Essentials (2002)

“Prolonged involvement with Parliament has in the end convinced me that the customary concentration on it as the centre of public affairs, however traditional it may be, is entirely misleading. This is a message, it seems to me, that needs to be absorbed into the general history of England.”

Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, The Parliament of England, 1559-1581 (1986)

“English government has a special claim to be studied. It developed in comparative freedom from outside interference, producing a curious blend of decentralized and popular freedom with strong, efficient, and centralized administration.”

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, Tudor Revolution in Government (1953)

“In history there are no authorities: history is a free study in which no man can claim rule, or credence for his mere ipse dixit, and in which the only true sin is to deny a hearing to views with which one happens to disagree.”

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, 'Presidential Address: The Historian's Social Function' (1976)

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