Historian Quotes

Truth can thus only percolate in the form of hearsay.

Robert Conquest

Of Rab Butler:

He seemed like a benign and decent beached whale washed up on the harder shores of modern Conservatism.

Once a woman declared that she was desperately in love with him, and he took her to bed with him. "How shall I enter that item in your expense ledger?" asked his accountant later, on learning that she had got 4,000 gold pieces out of him; and Vespasian replied, "Just put it down to 'passion for Vespasian'".

But foreign should not be defined in geographical terms. Then it would have no meaning except territorial or tribal patriotism. To me that alone is foreign which is foreign to truth, foreign to Atman.

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

I think sometimes - do not we all? - that perhaps the present year is my last year and that all my busyness is foolish.

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

There is little history in the study of nature, and there is little nature in the study of history. I want to show how we can remedy that cultural lag by developing a new perspective on the historian's enterprise, one that will make us Darwinians at last.

Before the first World War women were arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, for using profanity, for appearing on beaches without stockings, for driving automobiles without a man beside them, for wearing outlandish attire for example, shorts

Geoffrey Perret

In America man never obeys man, but justice or the law.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The Truth apprehended by the Subconscious Psyche finds natural expression in Poetry; The Truth apprehended by the Intellect finds natural expression in science..

Arnold J. Toynbee

The Net is the ultimate empowerment tool. You have the right to express your opinion to a global audience, but everyone has the right not to pay any attention to it.

As a nation we are, however, slowly accepting the fact that the loose-jointed, easy-going, somewhat irresponsible system of administration which we carried over from our rural, agricultural background is no longer adequate for present and future needs.

Leonard D. White

Give me a well-cooked, well-served meal, a bouquet, and a sunset, and I can do more for a man's soul than all the cant ever preached. I can even do it without a sunset!

Ann Ellis Hanson

'There won't be any revolution in America,' said Isadore. Nikitin agreed. 'The people are all too clean. They spend all their time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can't feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom.'

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 human desire to escape the flesh, which took one form in asceticism, might take another form in the creation of machines. Thus, the wish to rise above the bestial body manifested itself not only in angels but in mechanical creatures. Certainly, once machines existed, humans clearly attached to them feelings of escape from the flesh.

If after all my Atheology turns out wrong and your Theology right I feel I shall always be able to pass into Heaven (if I want to) as a friend of G.K.C.'s. Bless you.

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...

Economists have traditionally been leery at mentalités as a factor in long-term economic development. In the budding literature on the economic rise of the West, such factors have been ignored or curtly dismissed. In the past, economists' hostility to religious factors stems from the incompleteness of such theories. Attitudes were a matter of degree, not of absolutes.

The twilight zone that lies between living memory and written history is one of the favorite breeding places of mythology.

C. Vann Woodward

The withered primrose by the mourning river,
The faded summer's sun from weeping fountains,
The light-blown bubble vanished for ever,
The molten snow upon the naked mountains,
Are emblems that the treasures we up-lay
Soon wither, vanish, fade, and melt away.

Women owe Friedan an incalculable debt for The Feminine Mystique. Domesticity was not a satisfactory story of an intelligent woman's life.

Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

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

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

Geoffrey Blainey