Historian Quotes

No wars are unintended or 'accidental'. What is often unintended is the length and bloodiness of the war.

Geoffrey Blainey

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.

An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces.

We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing the full extent of dependence and interdependence in American life. As long as we pretend that only poor or abnormal families need outside assistance, we will shortchange poor families, overcompensate rich ones, and fail to come up with effective policies for helping families in the middle.

Stephanie Coontz

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

Advice is like rain that soaks everything without being sought.

The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle. In this sense one should understand Napoleon's saying: "I have never had a plan of operations."
Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.

Throughout the world, half of all children go to bed hungry each night and one in seven of God's children is facing starvation. Before such statistics, believers should never forget Dostoevsky's assertion that the suffering of children is the greatest proof against the existence of God; for without justice, there is no God.

Jesus Christ rose from the grave.' With this proclamation, the Christian church began. This may be the fundamental element of Christian faith; certainly it is the most radical.

He [Charles Haughey] was a very promising minister in the '60s, but once he became leader all he was concerned with was staying leader. It was always about the cult of leadership. His sense of himself was much more important than any vision he had for the country. People say he discovered fiscal rectitude in '87, and people talk about his contribution to Anglo-Irish affairs, but really if you try and look for any consistency in his affairs after the late '70s you can't find it because it's just about him.

Diarmaid Ferriter

Oh! that fear
When the heart longs to know, what it is death to hear.

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

Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson

The temperament of a collector is an interesting one; after all, necessity is never the raison d'être of a collection. And since a collection can never be complete — there is always another item or a better version available — its creation requires a predatory love of objects and an endless appetite.

Many of the political jokes that circulated in the Third Reich were directed at Goering. He collected them [all] in a large leather notebook and delighted in re-telling most of them to his friends.

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.

Constance Rourke

'Good wine needs no bush', and if there were need to urge the reading of history it would be proof that history is too dull and unattractive to be read.

Albert Bushnell Hart

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

Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to learn. Uncertainty creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles.

It has often been said that modern nursing could not have developed independently of modern medicine, but... modern medicine could not have developed without the emergence of modern nursing.

I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive.

No one thinks Las Vegas is real; it is illusion, but visitors willingly suspend disbelief and pretend.

Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair.

I strode among giants, friends tell me now, though at the time I felt more like a misfit associating with oddballs.

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