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Herbert Butterfield Quotes

Sir Herbert Butterfield was Regius Professor of History and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. As a British historian and philosopher of history, he is remembered chiefly for a short volume early in his career entitled The Whig Interpretation of History and for his Origins of Modern Science . Butterfield turned increasingly to historiography and man's developing view of the past. Butterfield was a devout Christian and reflected at length on Christian influences in historical perspectives.

Butterfield thought that individual personalities were more important than great systems of government or economics in historical study. His Christian beliefs in personal sin, salvation and providence were a great influence in his writings, a fact he freely admitted. At the same time, Butterfield's early works emphasized the limits of a historian's moral conclusions, "If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance". Wikipedia  

✵ 7. October 1900 – 20. July 1979

Works

The Whig Interpretation of History
Herbert Butterfield: 11 quotes0 likes

Famous Herbert Butterfield Quotes

“But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness—each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked—each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”

Herbert Butterfield

Christianity, Diplomacy and War (1953), p. 43.

“Considering the part played by the sciences in the story of our Western civilization, it is hardly possible to doubt the importance which the history of science will sooner or later acquire both in its own right and as the bridge which has been so long needed in between the Arts and the Sciences.”

Herbert Butterfield

The Origins of Modern Science (1957) Introduction

“We have to be on our guard when the whig historian tells us… that the Reformation is justified because it ultimately led to liberty… for it is possible to argue against the whig historian that the ultimate issue which he applauds only came in the long run from the fact that, in its immediate results, The Reformation was disastrous to liberty.”

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

Source: The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

“The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.”

Herbert Butterfield

The Origins Of History (1981)

“About the scientific revolution: it “outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes.””

Herbert Butterfield

The origins of modern science, 1300-1800, Bell (1949).

“When the sins and errors of an age have made the world impossible to live in, the next generation, seeking to make life tolerable again, may be able to find no way save by surrender of cherished ideals, and so may find themselves compelled to cast about for new dreams and purposes. An important aspect of the historical process is the work of the new generation… being driven to something like a creative act for the very reason that life on the old terms has become impossible.”

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

“The hardest strokes of heaven fall in history upon those who imagine that they can control things in a sovereign manner, as though they were kings of the earth, playing Providence not only for themselves but for the far future—reaching out into the future with the wrong kind of far-sightedness, and gambling on a lot of risky calculations in which there must never be a single mistake. And it is a defect in such enthusiasts that they seem unwilling to leave anything to Providence, unwilling even to leave the future flexible, as one must do; and they forget that in any case, for all we know, our successors may decide to switch ideals and look for a different utopia before any of our long shots have reached their objective, or any of our long-range projects have had fulfillment. It is agreeable to all the processes of history, therefore, that each of us should rather do the good that is straight under our noses. Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world and then leave the leaven to leaven the whole lump, than those who are for ever thinking that life is vain unless one can act through the central government, carry legislation, achieve political power and do big things.”

Herbert Butterfield

Christianity and History (1949), p. 104.

“Humanism and Humanitarianism, Liberalism and Internationalism...emerge as a result of a tendency to translate into secular terms certain movements and aspirations which had characterised a Christian civilisation... humanitarianism, for example, is an anaemic substitute for the doctrine of New Testament love.”

Herbert Butterfield

Source: Christianity in European History (1951), pp. 40-41

Herbert Butterfield Quotes about history

“The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical".””

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

“If history can do anything it is to remind us of those complications that undermine our certainties, and to show us that all our judgements are merely relative to time and circumstance. …we can never assert that history has proved any man right in the long run.”

Herbert Butterfield book The Whig Interpretation of History

The Whig Interpretation of History (1931)

“One of the paradoxes of history has been the way in which the name of England has come to be so closely associated with liberty on the one hand and tradition on the other hand.”

Herbert Butterfield

Liberty in the Modern World (1952), p. 21

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