Quotes about historian (462 quotes, page 5)

“Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part II: The Banality of Slavery, page 58.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)
Context: Yet what's missing from Cullen's explanation is a context for Harris' rage attack on Columbine High School. Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason. Their murder sprees were and are explained as symptoms of the perpetrators' innate evil, or of foreign forces, rather than as reactions to unbearable circumstances.

Failure

“And thus far historians produce the perfection of this science. But Euclid was not much junior to these, who collected elements, and constructed many of those things which were invented by Eudoxus; and perfected many which were discovered by Theætetus. Besides, he reduced to invincible demonstrations, such things as were exhibited by others with a weaker arm. But he lived in the times of the first Ptolemy: for Archimedes mentions Euclid, in his first book, and also in others. Besides, they relate that Euclid was asked by Ptolomy, whether there was any shorter way to the attainment of geometry than by his elementary institution, and that he answered, there was no other royal path which led to geometry. Euclid, therefore, was junior to the familiars of Plato, but more ancient than Eratosthenes and Archimedes (for these lived at one and the same time, according to the tradition of Eratosthenes) but he was of the Platonic sect, and familiar with its philosophy: and from hence he appointed the constitution of those figures which are called Platonic, as the end of his elementary institutions.”

Proclus (412–485) Greek philosopher

Source: The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements Vol. 1 (1788), Ch. IV. On the Origin of Geometry, and its Inventors.

Books , Way , Science , Time

“I cannot see the war as historians see it.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Resurrection of a Life (1935)
Context: I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes. I see it as a large thing too, only I break it into small units of one man at a time, and see it as a large and monstrous thing for each man involved. I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers, and all the men who survived the war, including myself, I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers. There is no such thing as a soldier. I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign.

War

“The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate!”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925)
Context: Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me—oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist.
To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.
He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

Love , Money , Hate , People

“Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)
Context: Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. Racial segregation as a way of life did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War. There were no laws segregating the races then. And as the noted historian, C. Vann Woodward, in his book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, clearly points out, the segregation of the races was really a political stratagem employed by the emerging Bourbon interests in the South to keep the southern masses divided and southern labor the cheapest in the land. You see, it was a simple thing to keep the poor white masses working for near-starvation wages in the years that followed the Civil War. Why, if the poor white plantation or mill worker became dissatisfied with his low wages, the plantation or mill owner would merely threaten to fire him and hire former Negro slaves and pay him even less. Thus, the southern wage level was kept almost unbearably low. Toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened. That is what was known as the Populist Movement. The leaders of this movement began awakening the poor white masses and the former Negro slaves to the fact that they were being fleeced by the emerging Bourbon interests. Not only that, but they began uniting the Negro and white masses into a voting bloc that threatened to drive the Bourbon interests from the command posts of political power in the South. To meet this threat, the southern aristocracy began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society. I want you to follow me through here because this is very important to see the roots of racism and the denial of the right to vote. Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.

Life , War , Books , Law

“As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
Source: Wendy McElroy, ‎Carl Watner (1987) The Voluntaryist, Nr. 23-41 (1987), p. 120; Republished in: " Propaganda Review, 1987 http://www.zpub.com/un/chomsky.html," at zpub.com, accessed May 23, 2014.
Context: Pointing to the massive amounts of propaganda spewed by government and institutions around the world, observers have called our era the age of Orwell. But the fact is that Orwell was a latecomer on the scene. As early as World War I, American historians offered themselves to President Woodrow Wilson to carry out a task they called "historical engineering," by which they meant designing the facts of history so that they would serve state policy. In this instance, the U. S. government wanted to silence opposition to the war. This represents a version of Orwell's 1984, even before Orwell was writing.

War , World , History

“One of the historians of Darranda said: To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Telling (2000), Ch. 4, §3 (pp. 90–91)
Context: One of the historians of Darranda said: To learn a belief without belief is to sing a song without the tune.
A yielding, an obedience, a willingness to accept these notes as the right notes, this pattern as the true pattern, is the essential gesture of performance, translation, and understanding. The gesture need not be permanent, a lasting posture of the mind or heart, yet it is not false. It is more than the suspension of disbelief needed to watch a play, yet less than the conversion. It is a position, a posture in the dance.

Learning , Singing

“Why brilliant fashion-designers, a notoriously non-analytic breed, sometimes succeed in anticipating the shape of things to come better than professional predictors, is one of the most obscure questions in history; and, for the historian of culture, one of the most central.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

Source: The Age of Extremes (1992), Chapter Six, The Arts 1914-1945

History , Fashion , Question

“Cambridge historians who aren't Christians would tell you that if it wasn't for the Wesley revival and the social change that Wesley's revival had brought, England would have had its own form of the French Revolution.”

Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) American theologian

A Christian Manifesto (1982)
Context: Cambridge historians who aren't Christians would tell you that if it wasn't for the Wesley revival and the social change that Wesley's revival had brought, England would have had its own form of the French Revolution. It was Wesley saying people must be treated correctly and dealing down into the social needs of the day that made it possible for England to have its bloodless revolution in contrast to France's bloody revolution.

Change

“Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two.”

Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British historian, author of A Study of History

Civilization on Trial (1948), chapter 2, p. 23.
Context: Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two. To date, these two plagues have been deadly enough, in partnership, to kill off nineteen out of twenty representatives of this recently evolved species of human society; but, up to now, the deadliness of these scourges has had a saving limit.

Death , War , Appearance , Dead

“He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one.”

Max Müller (1823–1900) German-born philologist and orientalist

Preface (Scribner edition, 1872) 
Chips from a German Workshop (1866)
Context: He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.

Fear , Faith , Religion

“Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers, — Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin… Alas the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to lawyers, — nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other, — her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit, — that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever, — not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All, — rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in Common.”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

The Rev<sup>d</sup> Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History
Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Ch. 35

Life , People , Art , History

“I will leave it to history and historians to judge my father’s reign. But most of all it is up to all those Iranians who have the benefit of perspective and in the same way are in a position to compare things.”

Reza Pahlavi (1960) Last crown prince of the former Imperial State of Iran

As quoted by Christoph Lehermayr, Der Sohn des Schahs spricht exklusiv mit NEWS.at: "Ich bin bereit, Konig zu werden" http://www.rezapahlavi.org/details_article.php?article=397&page=3, NEWS.at, September 15, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

Way , History

“There are historians here, and people with their own views on our country’s history might argue with me, but I think that the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are practically one single people, no matter what others might say.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Вот люди, которые имеют свои собственные взгляды, здесь историков очень много, на историю нашей страны, могут поспорить, но мне кажется, что русский и украинский народ – это практически один народ, вот кто бы чего ни говорил.
At the Seliger National Youth Forum, August 29, 2014. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46507 http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46507
On Ukraine

People , History , Thinking , Country

“Moreover, the British and communal historians attacked the notion of a composite culture in India.”

Bipan Chandra (1928–2014) Indian historian

Quoted from Arun Shourie (2014) Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud. HarperCollins.

Communication

“It is true that in the decades in which India was ruled imperiously by the Congress, the task of writing history textbooks was allotted to Leftist historians who chose to view India’s past through a distorted lens. The most celebrated of these historians, Romila Thapar, has gone so far as to deny that Muslim invaders destroyed the temples of us idolatrous infidels. Undoubtedly, if she were writing about more recent history, she would deny that the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan — and would say that they fell to pieces of their own accord.”

Tavleen Singh (1950) Indian journalist

Tavleen Singh, Fifth column: Cultural renewal Indian Express https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/fifth-column-cultural-renewal/99/ 2019

Past , History

“So why has the matter dragged on for so long? Can a handful of historians be held accountable for stalling resolution of what is essentially a settled matter? Their voluble assertions on Babri Masjid have all been found to be erroneous, yet there has been no public retraction. Are they liable for vitiating social harmony over the issue? If the nation has to move on, honest answers must be found to these questions.”

Meenakshi Jain Indian historian

Source: The Battle for Rama: Case of the Temple at Ayodhya (2017), p.145

Question

“Increasingly, I believe that the issue of migration will be seen by future historians as the fatal solvent of the EU. In their accounts Brexit will appear as merely an early symptom of the crisis. Their argument will be that a massive Völkerwanderung overwhelmed the project for European integration, exposing the weakness of the EU as an institution and driving voters back to national politics for solutions.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

"The EU melting pot is melting down" https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/18/the-melting-pot-melting-down/2tShNLlY7JLn4v3PQEtoLK/story.html Boston Globe, June 18, 2018.

Future , Appearance

“One result of this obscurity we probably find in the ease with which the physicist, as compared with either the pure mathematician or the historian, is entangled in the meshes of such pseudosciences as natural theology and spiritualism.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Nature

“I was to slowly discover that Savarkar was a bundle of contradictions and a historian’s enigma. He simultaneously means many things to many people. An alleged atheist and a staunch rationalist who strongly opposed orthodox Hindu beliefs and the caste system and dismissed cow worship as mere superstition, Savarkar was also the most vocal political voice for the Hindu community through the entire course of the Indian freedom struggle.... A feted revolutionary who created an intellectual corpus of literature that inspired the revolutionary movement in India for decades, Savarkar was also a passionate and sensitive poet, a prolific writer and playwright, and a fiery orator. ...The social reformer in him strove to dismantle the scourges of untouchability and caste hierarchies, and advocated a unification of Hindu society.”

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883–1966) Indian pro-independence activist,lawyer, politician, poet, writer and playwright

Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past

Freedom , People , Communication , Literature

“Translation from Portuguese: Many modern analysts have been focused on explaining the troubles with communism and its repercussions as seen in Eastern Europe and Russia. Communism remains a topic of study for political scientists. In contrast, the memory of fascism has slightly faded away. It is a topic of study primarily for historians. This makes it easier for politicians to muddle and play with fascist ideas.”

Radosveta Vassileva (1985) legal scholar

Muitos analistas modernos têm-se concentrado em explicar os problemas com o comunismo e as suas repercussões no leste europeu e na Rússia. O comunismo continua a ser um objeto de estudo para politólogos. Em contraste, a memória do fascismo tem-se desvanecido e é um objeto de estudo sobretudo para historiadores. Isto torna mais fácil para os políticos confundirem e brincarem com ideias fascistas.
Sete breves exemplos da aparente “retórica reconfortante” da extrema-direita e uma explicação sobre a extrema-esquerda, " https://expresso.pt/internacional/2019-11-14-Sete-breves-exemplos-da-aparente-retorica-reconfortante-da-extrema-direita-e-uma-explicacao-sobre-a-extrema-esquerda", Expresso (November 14, 2019)

Study , Communication , Memory , Idea

“In the very long run, of course, truth will be restored. If you can learn anything at all from history, it is that everything changes. So, the present power equation that has made these distortions possible, won’t endure forever. It is a foregone conclusion that one day, the negative role of the secularist historians will be seen for what it was. Western Indologists who chose to toe the secularist line, even against their own research findings, will not look good either.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Source: 2010s, On Modi Time (2015), Chapter : Ayodhya Interview 2013

Truth , Learning , History , Change

“This was reckless, for … the eventual discovery of such a temple would justify a contrario the replacement of the mosque with a restored temple. At least in theory, but the Marxists were confident that their opponents would never get the chance to press this point. Under the prevailing power equation, they expected to get away with a plain denial of history… Ever since, the secularist historians have been bluffing their way through the controversy.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya, the Finale (2003)

Chance , Confidence , History , Self-confidence

“The aim of the pro-Babri Masjid historians was never to settle any historical questions. If it had been, then they would not have opposed the VHP’s request to organize systematic excavations at the site; nor would they have concealed the pro-temple evidence in their publications. Their aim was merely to distract public attention from the obvious and extremely simple solution of this controversy. The fact that this solution would be in favour of the Hindu claims was apparently unbearable to them because of their seething hatred of their ancestral religion.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Ayodhya: The Case Against the Temple (2002)

Religion , Question

“Intellectually, these Nehruvian historians and pressmen stand thoroughly discredited. But they have power positions in the media and in the education and research establishments, so they still manage to black out criticism and alternative opinions…. They know they have been beaten at the intellectual level, but they use their power over the public arena to ensure that these challengers remain in the margins.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Education

“When it comes to dealing with the history of persecution and temple destruction by the Muslims, secularist historians throw all regard for hard evidence to the wind and replace it with a purely deductive (which is typically medieval) approach : Islam is tolerant, therefore the destruction and persecution cannot have taken place.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

History

“None but lawyers and historians are aware how much of truth, justice and good sense, there is in the notions of the Communists, as to the community of property. Laying no stress on the too abstract proposition that Providence gave the world not to one man, or set of men, but to all mankind, it is a fact that all governments, in civilized countries, recognize the obligation to support the poor, and thus, in some degree, make all property a common possession.”

George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) American activist

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 47

Justice , Country , Support , Communication

“But today the fashion is to ascribe the extinction of Buddhism to the persecution of Buddhists by Hindus, to the destruction of their temples by the Hindus. One point is that the Marxist historians who have been perpetrating this falsehood have not been able to produce even an iota of evidence to substantiate the concoction. In one typical instance, Romila Thapar had cited three inscriptions. The indefatigable Sita Ram Goel looked them up. Two of these turned out to have absolutely no connection with Buddhist viharas or their destruction, and the one that did deal with an object being destroyed had been held by authorities to have been a concoction; in any event, it told a story which was as different from what the historian had insinuated as day from night.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Fashion , Night

“Most historians agree that historical Italian Fascism was a mixed bag of rightwing and left-wing socioeconomic policies. Nevertheless, recent evidence has shed new light on the underpinnings of Italian Fascism, discovering that this totalitarian state had embodied a far more collectivistic, socialist, and progressive ideology, placing it squarely on the left side of the political dichotomy, that is, only if Marxism is also considered to be on the Left.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), pp. 194-195

Light

“The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans.”

W.E.B. Du Bois book Black Reconstruction

Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 713

Reading , Making love , History , Change

“The mention made by Maulana Abdul Hai of Hindu temples turned into mosques, is only the tip of an iceberg, The iceberg itself lies submerged in the writings of medieval Muslim historians, accounts of foreign travellers and the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India. A hue and cry has been raised in the name of secularism and national integration whenever the iceberg has chanced to surface, inspite of hectic efforts to keep it suppressed. Marxist politicians masquerading as historians have been the major contributors to this conspiracy of silence.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

.... The vast cradle of Hindu culture is literally littered with ruins of temples and monasteries belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma - Buddhist, Jain, Saiva, Shakta, Vaishnava and the rest. ... The story of how Islamic invaders sought to destroy the very foundations of Hindu society and culture is long and extremely painful. It would certainly be better for everybody to forget the past, but for the prescriptions of Islamic theology which remain intact and make it obligatory for believers to destroy idols and idol temples.
Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Chance , Silence , Cry , Travel

“India possesses, it is true, a class of texts that proclaims to be a history of the subcontinent, the Puranas. ….. Nevertheless, they have been used uncritically, e. g., by some historians such as R. Thapar, and by modern archaeologists as materials to establish their identifications of particular pre-historic cultures.”

Michael Witzel (1943) German-American philologist

1990. On Indian Historical Writing. pp. 1-57 in ‘Nihon Minami Ajia Gakkai: Hatsubai Tokyo Daigaku Shuppanaki. Tokyo

History

“Tulsidas is the highest tree in the garden of Hindu poetry, though his name does not appear in Aeen-i-Akbari or any book of Muslim historians or even narratives of European writers who worked on information taken from Persian historians. Yet, Tuslidas was the greatest man of India of his time. In fact he can be called greater than Akbar because the victory that the poet registered in the hearts of thousands of millions of people was greater and more lasting than all the imperious victories put together…the Ramacharritamanas is such an enormous epic that its English adaptation by Growse is of 362 pages. The declinations in this epic are so similar to Christianity that on numerous spots, if Rama is replaced by Christ, there can be no question.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Vincent Smith in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", pp.34-35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas

Tree , Time , Question , Victory

“Hitler in 1919 took a position in the Communist run Bavarian Soviet Republic, wearing in public a red armband, according to a number of historians including Thomas Weber. And a little later after the Bavarian Soviet Republic was defeated, Hitler claimed to be a ‘social democrat.’”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

Source: Killing History: The False Left-Right Political Spectrum and the Battle between the ‘Free Left’ and the ‘Statist Left', (2019), p. 285

“History is a repository of human experiences and one can not only understand the present by studying history but also find solutions to its problems as well. However, historians sometimes present a very pessimistic view of life whereas at other times, they inspire dejected and disillusioned people to struggle for survival.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

Dimensions of History, Chapter: Challenge and response, p. 56
History, What History Tells Us, Dimensions of History

Study , Time , Understanding , History

“History is a powerful subject which can be used to create a true historical consciousness. Unfortunately, it can also he misused and we often sec how politician distort it to whip up the emotion of people in older to achieve their political agenda. As they have a large following their version of history becomes popular among their followers. If not corrected the falsification of history is accepted as the absolute truth. This reaise the question whether historians should challenge the popular emotions of the people and correct historical facts or keep silent and let the falsification go on unchecked.”

Mubarak Ali (1941) Historian, activist, scholar

What History Tells Us, Chapter: Task of the Historian, p. 25
History, What History Tells Us

Truth , People , History , Question

“This age proclaims the sovereignty of the citizen, and the inviolability of life; it crowns the people, and consecrates man. In art, it possesses all varieties of genius,—writers, orators, poets, historians, publicists, philosophers, painters, sculptors, musicians; majesty, grace, power, force, splendour, colour, form, style; it renews its strength in the real and in the ideal, and bears in its hand the two thunderbolts, the true and the beautiful. In science it accomplishes unheard-of miracles; it makes of cotton salt petre, of steam a horse, of the voltaic battery a workman, of the electric fluid a messenger, of the sun a painter; it waters itself with subterranean streams, pending the time when it shall warm itself with the central fire; it opens upon the two infinites those two windows, the telescope upon the infinitely great, the microscope upon the infinitely little, and it finds stars in the first abyss, and insects in the second, which prove to it the existence of God... It annihilates time, it annihilates space, it annihilates suffering; it writes a letter from Paris to London, and has an answer in ten minutes; it cuts off a man's leg, the man sings and smiles.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Singing , God , Time , Sun

“Hardly anyone expected the American uprising to succeed. Thousands of colonists emigrated to Canada or hid in the woods, certain that the king's armies would tear the colonial regiments to shreds. Nor did a majority of the people support the struggle for independence, even in theory. Historians estimate that one-third favored independence, one-third favored retaining British ties, and one-third were indifferent.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Indifference , Support , People , Tear

“As historian James MacGregor Burns noted, they also formulated their protests as official appeals to the king "shipped across the Atlantic after suitable hometown publicity."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Five, The American Matrix for Transformation

Relation ships

“We Anglophones tend to use the words nation and state more or less interchangeably, but when one nation is divided into two states, it’s important to stick to the Koreans’ own practice of distinguishing clearly between nationalism (minjokjuŭi) and patriotism / state spirit (aeguksim, kukka chŏngsin, kukkajuŭi, etc). Historians do this even in English when discussing the Weimar Republic, where nationalism undermined support for the state — and for liberal democracy — just as it does in South Korea today.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, On Experts and Exegetes (September 2017)

Democracy , Support

“I am interested in how we interrogate architecture in terms of its social functions and meanings. Architectural historians writing on eighteenth and early nineteenth century Britain have tended to see social history as the answer to this question. But the social history of architecture or the histories of specific social groups which operated in and around the architecture or building(s), or indeed the spaces created by them or for them, provide only a backdrop or loose historical context.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 4 : A class performance : Social histories of architecture

History , Question

“[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 2 : The authority of the author : Biography and the reconstruction of the canon

Drawing , History , Past , Truth

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

History , Question , Nature , Universe

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Hell , Religion , Time , Law

“[T]he writing of history is inescapably political, my aim is partly to provide a basis for a more politically and ethically responsible intervention by historians in modern political debate about migration.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Source: Quotaes, Two Worlds Become One (2014), p. 519

History

“[I'm] (probably) the most significant historian of early medieval Europe under the age of 60 anywhere in the world... [T]hat's not (just) me being cocky, but a pretty sober assessment of the range and quality of my work.”

Guy Halsall (1964) English historian

Quoted in Lecturer “deeply regrets” offence caused by post, Blumsom, Amy, 4 December 2012, Nouse, January 27, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20121206054518/http://www.nouse.co.uk/2012/12/04/lecturer-deeply-regrets-offence-caused-by-post/, 6 December 2012 http://www.nouse.co.uk/2012/12/04/lecturer-deeply-regrets-offence-caused-by-post/,
Quotaes, VLE (2012)

World , Age

“For heroes do not make history—that is the historians’ job—but, passive, let themselves be borne along, swept up to the crest of the tide of change, of chance, of war.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

The Lady of Moge (p. 183)
Short fiction, Orsinian Tales (1976)

Chance , History , War , Making love

“History, as Treitschke contends, is first of all the presentation of res gestae, and of active statesmen. The essential things in the statesman are strength of will, courage, massive ambition, passionate joy in the result. It needs no wizard to see how such doctrine as this lends a hand to the sinister school of political historians, who insist that the event is its own justification; that Force and Right are one.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

‘Politics and History’, Address as Chancellor of the University of Manchester (summer 1912), quoted in The Works of Lord Morley: Volume IV (1921), p. 33
1910s

School , Courage , History , Joy

“It seems that white people on average are quite silly, for most of us have lapped up the version of Indian history propagated by India's "eminent historians" whose eminence results from their toeing the hegemonic party-line rather than from a respect for the data in the primary sources.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

305
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

People , History

“Current relations between Russia and the US struggle through the worst times. Historians, politicians, political scientists cannot recall any other time, when our relations were in such a miserable state. Other countries, international peace and security suffer because of this...”

Anatoly Antonov (1955) Russian diplomat and statesman, Russian Ambassador to the United States (since 2017)

Speech at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterrey (13 October 2018)

Peace , Time , Country , Suffering

“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)

“[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.”

Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) historian

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

Fight , Truth , Way , People

“The past is therefore a permanent dimension of the human consciousness, an inevitable component of the institutions, values and other patterns of human society. The problem for historians is to analyse the nature of this 'sense of the past' in society and to trace its changes and transformations.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Chap. 2 : The Sense of the Past
On History (1997)

Change , Past , Nature , Problem

“Every single Muslim historian of medieval India lists temples which the rulers he is writing about has destroyed and the mosques he has built instead.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Source: Indian controversies: Essays on religion in politics (1993) 429

“And that from historians who themselves have distorted evidence in order to satisfy certain political compulsions : apparently a case of what psychologists call projection.”

Koenraad Elst book Ayodhya and After

Source: 1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

“The modern historian of India must approach her as a living entity with a central continuous urge, of which the apparent life is a mere expression. Without such an outlook, it is impossible to understand India, which…stands today strong…determined not to be untrue to its ancient self.”

Kanaiyalal Maneklal Munshi (1887–1971) Indian independence movement activist, politician, writer and educationist (1887-1971)

Source: quoted in https://www.dharmadispatch.in/culture/revisiting-km-munshis-majestic-vision-for-writing-indias-history https://www.esamskriti.com/e/National-Affairs/For-The-Followers-Of-Dharma/History-Writing-And-Nationalism-1.aspx http://www.eng.vedanta.ru/library/prabuddha_bharata/August2005_editorial.php

Strong , Understanding , Life

“Okay, firstly, academic historians write academic history for academics. It's a myth that you can't be a historian without having a degree. Ian Fletcher, the globally acknowledged expert in the Peninsular War, doesn't have a degree. He always tells me that, “The books we write are the ones which academics read to get their degrees from.””

Rick D Phillips

Source: https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-become-historian-without-studying-history-in-University

Reading , History , War , Books

“You’re the military analyst, writer, historian: you, above all people, should know that those who decline to take a hand in controlling events surrender the ability to influence them.”

Charles E. Gannon (1960) American novelist

Source: Fire with Fire (2013), Chapter 26 (p. 303)

People

“Too many so-called historians are really 'hysterians'; their thinking is more visceral than cerebral. When their duties as citizens clash with their responsibilities as scholars, Clio frequently takes a back seat.”

Thomas A. Bailey (1902–1983) American historian

Essays Diplomatic and Undiplomatic of Thomas A. Bailey (1969), p. 10

Thinking

“A historian of science is not expected to be a scientist, but he is expected to have some basic knowledge of the scientific alphabet. Similarly, a historian of Orientalism—that is to say, the work of historians and philologists—should have at least some acquaintance with the history and philology with which they were concerned.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Bernard Lewis, "The Question of Orientalism", The New York Review of Books, 24 June 1982

History , Knowledge , Science

“Why does The Holocaust persist in haunting our conscience? Why does it dominate the introspection of philosophers and historians alike? By the numbers alone, the murders were not unprecedented. At that juncture of 20th Century history, Stalin and Lenin had already brutally murdered tens of millions. The Holocaust fascinates not because of its numbers, but because of the means employed. At no point in time had an entire society dedicated its full might to the perpetual elimination of those unwanted elements of the population. Every aspect of Hitler’s National Socialism was geared towards cleansing and improving the breeding stock of Germania. Hitler’s National Socialist government was focused on the breeding, education, and training of a “master race.” The social, cultural, legislative, and industrial mechanisms of Hitler’s National Socialism were designed to perpetually “select” its populace. The central planners of National Socialism would “select” those that would live, those that would die, and those that would be sterilized slave labor. National Socialism was intended to have the “total” control to decide who would be allowed to procreate, and as a result, those that would be allowed to contribute to Hitler’s ideal society.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: H.H. LAUGHLIN: American Scientist. American Progressive. Nazi Collaborator.

Training , Education , History , Time

“I spoke the other day to the art historian Vanni Scheiwiler who publishes in Milan. But Signor Scheiwiler is pessimistic; he says that under the influence of the new conformism the city, after all the cultural centre of Italy, has been undergoing a decline in intellectual vitality. Anyone who comes up with something that does not fit in with the line is promptly put down by being called a Fascist. The word Fascist is reported so often that one wonders whether it hasn’t lost all meaning! This reminded me of what Ignazio Silone said in 1945 soon after he returned to Italy from his Zurich exile: “The fascism of tomorrow will never say ‘I am Facism’. It will say: ‘I am anti-Facism’.””

Ignazio Silone (1900–1978) Italian author and politician

Source: https://books.google.de/books?id=CPdKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT250 PT250 books.google
Source: François Bondy: Italian Censorship (European Notebook). Encounter Band 47, No. 2 (1976) August, p. 51 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=iS0dAQAAMAAJ&q=silone; Reprint in: European Notebooks 1954-1985, Routledge, New York 2017,

Art

Quotes about historian page 5

Quotes about historian
page 5