Historian Quotes

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

No man can be a politician, except he be first a historian or a traveller; for except he can see what must be, or what may be, he is no politician.

What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.

The search for the truth for truth's sake is the mark of the historian.

But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt, and this is where I fault Stephen Ambrose and a lot of these guys who attack me - not all of life is a result of conspiracy by any means! Accident occurs alongside conspiracy.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

A good historian is timeless; although he is a patriot, he will never flatter his country in any respect.

So with truth - there is a certain moment when one can say, this is the truth and here I put a dot, a stop, and I go to another thing. A judge has to put an end to a deliberation. But for a historian, there's never an end to the past. It can go on and on and on.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.

The novelist must look on humanity without partiality or prejudice. His sympathy, like that of the historian, must be unbounded, and untainted by sect or party.

I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

Oh no, I'm not a historian or anything like that.

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.

But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general public.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind.

I'm a historian in my own mind.

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.

I didn't realize the president was such an historian.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.