Marc Bloch - The Historian's Craft

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The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

Marc Bloch
The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

Marc Bloch
But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Marc Bloch
There is no true understanding without a certain range of comparison.

Marc Bloch
Successive technological revolutions have immeasurably widened the psychological gap between generations. With some reason, perhaps, the man of the age of electricity and of the airplane feels himself removed from his masters.

Marc Bloch
For in the last analysis it is human consciousness which is the subject matter of history.

Marc Bloch
Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present...This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the historian.

Marc Bloch
The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

Marc Bloch
Each science, taken by itself, represents but a fragment of the universal march toward knowledge.

Marc Bloch