Historian Quotes

There are two elements of Hayek's background that justify our considering him an Austrian economist: first, that he was raised and went to university in Vienna in the first three decades of the twentieth century, and second, that when he finally decided on economics as his field of study, he was trained within the Austrian tradition in economics.

Such is the past career, present condition, and certain future of the Middle American. There are as many above him as below him, and especially as many below him as above him.

So great was the attempt to assay the erection of this large and laborious Theatre, whose only platform might well have expected the readiest hand of the best artist, that even in the entrance of the first draught, as one altogether discouraged, I found myself far unfit and unfurnished both of matter and means, either to build, or to beautifie so stately a project.

This filthy twentieth century. I hate its guts.

Few things reveal more about political leaders and their systems than the manner of their downfall,

The purpose of totalitarian parties, for which Bolshevism provided the model, was not to become the government, but to manipulate the government from behind the scenes.

Of Rab Butler:

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

History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.

Margaret MacMillan

Before the eighteenth century the demographic impact of the profession of medicine remained negligible. Relatively few persons could afford to pay a doctor for his often very expensive services; and for every case in which the doctor's attendance really made a difference between life and death, there were other instances in which even the best available professional services made little difference to the course of the disease, or actually hindered recovery.... Only with the eighteenth century did the situation begin to change; and it was not until after 1850 or so that the practice of medicine and the organization of medical services begin to make large-scale differences in human survival rates and population growth.

William Hardy McNeill

It is commonly said in some quarters that "Africa has awakened." This cannot be accepted by conscious Africans, for to have "awakened," one must have been asleep. Africa was not asleep. Africa was wide awake, but her land, as well as her sons and daughters, were subjected to the most barbarous treatment man has ever imposed on man.

Yosef Ben-Jochannan

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.

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.

Contemporary political theorists continue this type of thinking about democracy by arguing that the development of "public judgment" among regular citizens should be made the central concern of modern politics. Public judgment, in the words of Benjamin Barber, is a function of commonality that can be exercised only by citizens interacting with one another in the context of mutual deliberation and decision.

This being 1962, no one thought it odd to have a mime program on radio.

A drawing of the nude is a most revealing expression because it is at once the most private and the most personal. Often such drawings are made with no thought of public exhibition. They possess the intimacy of diaries.

If we look at the parpens piled up on the building site or at the block of bronze, nothing about them manifests that they are suited to being a house or a statue.... Aristotle speaks of the materials considered as such in terms of "the buildable" (I, 201a 16, b Bf), coining an adjective whose suffix expresses capacity (what he calls dunamis). This capacity, as we have seen, cannot be grasped after the manner of that with which perception provides us (color, hardness, etc.); it requires a gaze capable of probing more deeply, of proceeding from the real to the possible—as when Michelangelo "sees" a David in the formless block abandoned by other sculptors.

On Yahoo! pulling the plug on GeoCities:

[Yahoo!] found the way to destroy the most massive amount of history in the shortest amount of time with absolutely no recourse.

Jason Scott Sadofsky

Repeal is generally more difficult than original passage.

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

People seem always actually to know, with a degree of pain that has required the comfort of fairy tales, that when you are dressed in any particular way at all, you are revealed rather than hidden.

Four hundred years is but a moment in 10,000 years. Time is curved, time is braided. Throw out your clocks.

Howard Mansfield

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.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

Effective coordination of throughput required the placing of vigorous management controls over these despots.

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

The writings of all great men stand as a perpetual challenge to each succeeding generation which attempts to make an interpretation suitable to its own age.

I. Bernard Cohen