19th-century Historian Quotes

Without war no State could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is a multiplicity of states.

Heinrich von Treitschke

The tepee is much better to live in: always clean, warm in winter, cool in summer; easy to move... Indians and animals know better how to live than white man; nobody can be in good health if he does not have all the time fresh air, sunshine, and good water.

We go forth all to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of our search shall be the nature of the America that we created.

It is an old trick. The playgoer who does not like dirty plays is denounced as a prude; the music-lover who resents cacophony is told he is a pedant; and in all these matters the final crushing blow administered to the man of discrimination is the ascription to him of a hidebound prejudice against things that are new because they are new.

Royal Cortissoz

Nature, even if we hesitate to call it good, is infinitely interesting, infinitely beautiful.

History is past politics, and politics is present history.

Edward Augustus Freeman

The introduction of the Christian religion into the world has produced an incalculable change in history. There had previously been only a history of nations — there is now a history of mankind; and the idea of an education of human nature as a whole, — an education the work of Jesus Christ Himself — is become like a compass for the historian, the key of history, and the hope of nations.

Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné

Historically the buffalo had more influence on man than all other Plains animals combined. It was life, food, raiment, and shelter to the Indians. The buffalo and the Plains Indians lived together, and together passed away. The year 1876 marks practically the end of both.

Walter Prescott Webb

Law is merely the expression of the will of the strongest for the time being, and therefore laws have no fixity, but shift from generation to generation.

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

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

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.

William Archibald Dunning

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

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

Thomas Frederick Tout

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.

Felix Riesenberg

I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer.

Francis William Newman

You can prove anything by statistics, if you can only choose your statistics and stop when you want to. But statistics are like automobiles. Sometimes if you hitch yourself up with a statistic, you meet the fate of the farmer who put his fool head in the yoke with a skittish steer.

There happened in the Middle Ages what has happened so often since then. Those who were the beneficiaries of the established order were bent on defending it, not so much, perhaps, because it guaranteed their interests, as because it seemed to them indispensable to the preservation of society.

The Reformation was cradled in the printing-press, and established by no other instrument.

Agnes Strickland

Since what unnumbered year
Hast thou kept watch and ward
And o'er the buried Land of Fear
So grimly held thy guard?

Henry Howard Brownell

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

Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.

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

Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song? No wonder the bird has become the symbol for happiness. Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South.

Neltje Blanchan

Truth is always the first war casualty. The emotional disturbances and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime.

Harry Elmer Barnes