19th-century Historian Quotes

Of all human ambitions an open mind eagerly expectant of new discoveries and ready to remold convictions in the light of added knowledge and dispelled ignorances and misapprehensions, is the noblest, the rarest and the most difficult to achieve.

James Harvey Robinson

Strabo, traveling in North Africa … [did not find] its women in the army but found that they ruled the country politically, while the men were still without significance in the state, occupying themselves largely with body care and hair-do, greedy for golden jewelry with which to bedeck themselves. The Berbers of our times....[,] near the Atlas Mountains, … have preserved a strong gynocracy. In some Tuareg tribes, the women perpetuate the old culture and know Old Libyan writing and literature. Their men wear veils and remain illiterates.

One fact must be familiar to all those who have any experience of human nature - a sincerely religious man is often an exceedingly bad man.

William Winwood Reade

I never knew a man go for an honest day's walk for whatever distance, great or small, and not have his reward in the repossession of his soul.

G. M. Trevelyan

Do I believe in ghosts?...I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.

The ideal of progress, freedom of thought, and the decline of ecclesiastical power go together.

For a century longer, Rome still retains its outward form, but the swarming nations are now in full career.

John Lothrop Motley

There can be no doubt that the architects who planned and built the Ananda temple were Indians. Everything in this temple from Sikhara to the basement as well as the numerous stone sculptures found in its corridors and the terra-cotta... adoring its basement and terraces, bear the indubitable stamp of Indian genius and craftsmanship... In this sense, we may take it, therefore, that the Ananda, though built in the Burmese capital, is an Indian temple.

The American dream that has lured tens of millions of all nations to our shores in the past century has not been a dream of material plenty, though that has doubtlessly counted heavily. It has been a dream of being able to grow to fullest development as a man and woman, unhampered by the barriers which had slowly been erected in the older civilizations, unrepressed by social orders which had developed for the benefit of classes rather than for the simple human being of any and every class.

James Truslow Adams

History is the only science enjoying the ambiguous fortune of being required to be at the same time an art.

Johann Gustav Droysen

Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.

Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as a clipper ship.

Samuel Eliot Morison

History is primarily a socio-psychological science. In the conflict between the old and the new tendencies in historical investigation...we are at the turn of the stream, the parting of the ways in historical science.

Karl Gotthard Lamprecht

The hunger and thirst for knowledge, the keen delight in the chase, the good humored willingness to admit that the scent was false, the eager desire to get on with the work, the cheerful resolution to go back and begin again, the broad good sense, the unaffected modesty, the imperturbable temper, the gratitude for any little help that was given - all these will remain in my memory though I cannot paint them for others.

Frederic William Maitland

Force is never more operative than when it is known to exist but is not brandished.

Alfred T. Mahan

Shivaji proved, by his example, that the Hindu race could build a nation, found a State, defeat its enemies; they could conduct their own defence; they could protect and promote literature and art, commerce and industry; they could maintain navies and ocean going fleets of their own, and conduct naval battles on equal terms with foreigners. He taught the modern Hindus to rise to the full stature of their growth. He demonstrated that the tree of Hinduism was not dead, and that it could put forth new leaves and branches and once again rise up its head to the skies.

Jadunath Sarkar

Froude informs the Scottish youth
That parsons do not care for truth.
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries
History is a pack of lies.
What cause for judgements so malign?
A brief reflection solves the mystery—
Froude believes Kingsley a divine,
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.

Tact is not only kindness, but kindness skillfully extended.

James G. Randall

When we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south...

A "Crucial Experiment" is Impossible in Physics.

To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.

Hippolyte Taine

History is a living whole. If one organ be removed, it is nothing but a lifeless mass.

Frederic Harrison

Haiku... meditations... starting points for trains of thought

Harold Gould Henderson

It may well be that men of science, not kings, or warriors, or even statesmen are to be the heroes of the future.

Charles A. Beard

What matters most about political ideas is the underlying emotions, the music, to which ideas are a mere libretto, often of very inferior quality.