H. A. L. Fisher Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.

H. A. L. Fisher
Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.

H. A. L. Fisher
It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe.

H. A. L. Fisher
I can see … only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

H. A. L. Fisher
All political decisions are taken under great pressure, and if a treaty serves its turn for ten or twenty years, the wisdom of its framers is sufficiently confirmed.

H. A. L. Fisher
Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.

H. A. L. Fisher
Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave.

H. A. L. Fisher
It is easier for eight or nine elderly men to feel their way towards unanimity if they are not compelled to conduct their converging maneuvers under the microscopes and telescopes of the press, but are permitted to shuffle about a little in slippers.

H. A. L. Fisher