“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer
“I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?"”
A Personal History ([1983] 1984) p. 301
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A.J.P. Taylor15
Historian 1906–1990Related quotes
“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”
Julian Barnes (1946) English writer
Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
David Irving (1938) British writer and Holocaust denier
Interview with John Humphrys on The Today Program (23 December 2006) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today2_irving_20061223.ram
“Technicalities are, however, of more interest to historians than to contemporaries.”
Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer
Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 22, “We Walked in Clouds” (p. 268)
“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor
Time (26 June 2006)
Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor
Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
“The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”
Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer
Sect. 39; vol. 2, p. 128; H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (trans.) The Works of Lucian of Samosata.
How to Write History
“For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question.”
Harry Harrison (1925–2012) American science fiction author
Source: Deathworld (1960), p. 113
Context: "What about it, Meta?" he snapped. "No doubts? Do you think that destruction is the only way to end this war?"
"I don't know," she said. "I can't be sure. For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question."
"Congratulations," he said. "It's a sign of growing up."
Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist
Source: The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book
