19th-century Historian Quotes

Olympism is not a system - it is a state of mind. This state of mind has emerged from a double cult: that of effort and that of Eurythmy - a taste of excess and a taste of measure combined.

Pierre de Coubertin
Pierre de Coubertin
Since the earliest times it is as the exploiter that the Jew has been known amongst his fellow men of all races and creeds. Moreover, he has persistently shown himself ungrateful... The Jews have always formed a rebellious element in every state.

Nesta Helen Webster
Nesta Helen Webster
Since bad men find the rule of kings no less burdensome than that of tyrants, the recognition of the right of private citizens to kill tyrants involves rather more chance of losing a king than of being relieved of a tyrant.

Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history, and what is imagination but the projection of the author's personality.

The Jews emerge into history, not a nation of keen spiritual aspirations and altruistic ethics, but that pagan people, worshipping rocks, sheep and cattle, and spirits of caves and wells, of whom the Old Testament, tending towards its higher ideal, gives fragmentary but convincing evidence.

James T. Shotwell
James T. Shotwell
We investigate the past not to deduce practical political lessons, but to find out what really happened.

An excellent monument might be erected to the Unknown Stockholder. It might take the form of a solid stone ark of faith apparently floating in a pool of water.

When the first settlers landed on American shores, the difficulties in finding or making shelter must have seemed ironical as well as almost unbearable.

Swift flies our time on pinions fleet, Like vapours on the breeze; The transient bliss we now call sweet, The passing moments seize. The gilded joy, the present hour, Soon wing themselves away; Departing like the fading flower That pleas'd us Yesterday.

At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.

As soon as you begin to say We have always done things this way -- perhaps that might be a better way, conscious law-making is beginning. As soon as you begin to say We do things this way -- they do things that way -- what is to be done about it? men are beginning to feel towards justice, that resides between the endless jar of right and wrong.

We are always looking for metaphors in which to express our ideas of life, for our language is inadequate for all its complexities. Life is a labyrinth... Life is a machine... Life is a laboratory... It is but a metaphor. When we speak of ultimate things we can, maybe, speak only in metaphors. Life is a dance, a very elaborate and complex dance.

Science is often identified with knowledge. This is a gross misunderstanding. Science is not merely knowledge, but also consciousness, that is, the skill of properly using knowledge.

Vasily Klyuchevsky
Vasily Klyuchevsky
History is full of the dead weight of things which have escaped the control of the mind, yet drive man on with a blind force.

The point in geometry is like the unit in arithmetic and the molecule in matter.

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together in the past and hope to do great things together in the future.

It is useful to ask oneself questions, but very dangerous to answer them.

Charles Seignobos
Charles Seignobos
Science hangs in a void of nescience, a planet turning in the dark.

The evidence seems to show beyond question that our present species of plants have descended by gradual evolution from simpler and fewer species which formerly existed, and which in turn were evolved from still simpler and fewer kinds - back, it is possible, to a single kind which throve in remotest antiquity.

William Francis Ganong
William Francis Ganong
The interplay of institutions is not... as perfect as one would have desired. The machinery creaks, its springs screech and the principles emerge badly cracked.

The itch of inquiry is ever vehement in him [the statistician], and he attaches himself to new questions as buoys made to float him into paradise.

Mothers have as powerful an influence over the welfare of future generations as all other earthly causes combined.

John Stevens Cabot Abbott
John Stevens Cabot Abbott
For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.

Michael Rostovtzeff
Michael Rostovtzeff
The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
Arturo Alfonso Schomburg
A successful revolution begins to develop a stake in the status quo.