British Historian Quotes

Eric Hobsbawm

Arnold J. Toynbee

Ernst Gombrich

Bernard Lewis

Saki

A. J. P. Taylor

John Foxe

Leadership is particularly necessary to ensure ready acceptance of the unfamiliar and that which is contrary to tradition.

By pagans the Jews (and later Christians) were seen as perverse, almost indeed as atheists, for they denied the very existence of other gods.

Adrian Goldsworthy

The grain of real knowledge is concealed in a vast deal of esoteric chaff.

Alfred Rupert Hall

Hot on Sunday,
Cold on Monday,
Hashed on Tuesday,
Minced on Wednesday,
Curried Thursday,
Broth on Friday,
Cottage pie Saturday.

Dorothy Hartley

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

Thomas Frederick Tout

Stalin was formed by much more than a miserable childhood, just as the USSR was formed by much more than Marxist ideology.

Simon Sebag Montefiore

I still recall, with something of a shock the moment, at the end of the first sitting, when I looked at what had been a lump of clay, and found that a third person was in the room.

On sitting to Elizabeth frink

John Pope-Hennessy

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

Democracies that are under threat of destruction face the impossible dilemma of either yielding to that threat by insisting on preserving the democratic niceties, or violating their own principles by curtailing democratic rights.

Richard J. Evans

I told him his nerves were affected: Every molehill was a mountain.

Thomas Hutchinson (governor)

Tribute at the funeral of his sister, Princess Diana:

She needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.

Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer

No science is more worthy of cultivation and encouragement than that which, calculating time by the aid of Astronomy, adjusts the results of observations thus obtained to the ordinary use and instruction of man.

Elias Hiam Lindo

Churches which emphasise ecstatic possession by the spirit, which foster prophecy and spiritual healing and exorcism have been seen as continuations of African belief and practice. Yet these very features, which are taken as being most African, are in reality the most Christian aspect of such churches. They spring directly from increasingly strong tendencies in world Christianity in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They spring in fact either from anti-establishment Christian Pentecostalism, as it developed in Europe and North America, or from evangelical revivalist tendencies within the major mission churches themselves. Few independent church leaders have claimed to be continuing African traditions.

In one sphere above all others, Anne Boleyn still had the power to influence him, and that was in the case of church reform. Anne was a passionate and sincere evangelical, the owner of a library of controversial reformist literature, and she was sympathetic to radical and even Lutheran ideas.

This filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts.

For if we merely take what obviously appears the line of least resistance, its obviousness will appeal to the opponent also; and this line may no longer be that of least resistance. In studying the physical aspect, we must never lose sight of the psychological, and only when both are combined is the strategy truly an indirect approach, calculated to dislocate the opponent's balance.

Basil Liddell Hart

Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer believe in politics. It is for this reason that we find both high levels of support for democracy in cross-national opinion polls and high rates of political apathy.

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

How could anyone be "Cary Grant"? But how can anyone, ever after, not consider the attempt?

Hitler was highly secretive - not least about his personal life, his background, and his family.

Napoleon's troops fought in bright fields, where every helmet caught some gleams of glory; but the British soldier conquered under the cool shade of aristocracy. No honours awaited his daring, no despatch gave his name to the applauses of his countrymen; his life of danger and hardship was uncheered by hope, his death unnoticed.

William Francis Patrick Napier

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

Frederic Harrison

Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future....

I do not think that a man's rise to power is necessarily the climax of his life or that his loss of office should be equated with his fall.

Isaac Deutscher

Wit is a treacherous dart. It is perhaps the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back.