Headstrong Historian Quotes

There are two processes which we adopt consciously or unconsciously when we try to prophesy. We can seek a period in the past whose conditions resemble as closely as possible those of our day, and presume that the sequel to that period will, save for some minor alterations, be similar. Secondly, we can survey the general course of development in our immediate past, and endeavor to prolong it into the near future. The first is the method the historian; the second that of the scientist. Only the second is open to us now, and this only in a partial sphere. ~ Winston Churchill

The first episodes I actually read for 'Downton,' Sybil was really intimidated and hadn't come into her own. So it's only in Series Two that she's become so headstrong. In general, I find it exciting to play strong, female roles because they're shocking. ~ Jessica Brown Findlay

As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian. ~ Hugh Blair

In some ways Jews and the various largely Catholic and often poor European immigrant groups were "white," as the historian Tom Guglielmo has recently put it, "on arrival." Where naturalization law was concerned, for example, ample precedents recognized their ability to become citizens, a right explicitly resting on their "whiteness." But they also remained, as Working toward Whiteness puts it, "on trial" for a harrowingly long time. ~ David Roediger

Many of the great world religions teach that God demands a particular faith and form of worship. It should not be surprising that SOME of the people who take these teachings seriously should sincerely regard these divine commands as incomparably more important than any merely secular virtues like tolerance or compassion or reason.
Across Asia and Africa the forces of religious enthusiasm are gathering strength, and reasom and tolerance are not safe even in the secular states of the West. The historian Huge Trevor-Roper has said that it was the spread of the spirit of science in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that finally ended the burning pf the witches in Europe. We may need to rely again on the influence of science to preserve a sane wolrd.It's not the certainty of the scientific knowledge that fits it for this role, but its UNCERTAINTY. Seeing scientists change their minds again and again about the matters that can be studied directly in laboratory experiments, how can one take seriously the claims of religious traditions or sacred writings to certain knowledge about matters beyond human experience ~ Steven Weinberg

As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters of our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us: "With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas," or, They went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them. ~ U Thant

Who are you going to be more impressed by, the person who has a litany of his own opinions, or the historian who can draw on the great thinkers who came before him? ~ Joshua Foer

The historian is an indissoluble part of his history, as the poet is of his poem, as the shadowy biographer is of his subject's life ... ~ A.S. Byatt

No historian should be trusted implicitly. ~ George Kitson Clark

Robert Farris Thompson, America's most prominent historian of African art, says that funky is derived from the Ki-Kongo lu-fuki, meaning "positive sweat" of the sort you get from dancing or having sex, but not working. One's mojo, which has to be "working" to attract a lover, is Ki-Kongo for "soul." Boogie comes from mbugi, meaning "devilishly good." And both jazz and jism likely derive from dinza, the Ki-Kongo word for "to ejaculate. ~ Christopher Ryan

It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings. ~ Ramsay MacMullen

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn. ~ Samuel Johnson

Although I am an anarch, I am not anti-authoritarian. Quite the opposite: I need authority, although I do not believe in it. My critical faculties are sharpened by the absence of the credibility that I ask for. As a historian, I know what can be offered. ~ Ernst Junger

I believe in horoscopes. I was born under the sign of the Ram, which means I'm headstrong, don't like people telling me what to do. ~ Loretta Lynn

The contrast between an apparent concern about poverty and lack of concern about inequality was nicely summarized recently by English historian David Kynaston: "Everyone is happy talking about eliminating poverty, because this looks like an admirable and ethical response to the problem of inequality, while leaving the structures of power untouched. ~ Branko Milanovic

The logic behind using stone for the facing of the Empire State building seemed irrefutable, the choice of Bedford limestone inarguable. - architectural historian John Tauranac ~ Douglas Wissing

I'm very headstrong and I know what I want from life. I listen to peoples' opinions, but a lot of the time I'll trust my own instincts. I'm also really clumsy, so I'm always getting hurt. ~ Ashley Tisdale

The failure of emancipation to take root during the war is one of the great What ifs of the Revolution. Another is: What if blacks had not fought for the American cause? What if a slave had not saved Colonel William Washington's life, with the result that his cavalry charge dissolved and the Battle of Cowpens had become a British victory? As the historian Thomas Fleming speculates, both North and South Carolina might well have gone over to the British. What if Glover's regiment of Massachusetts sailors had not had the manpower to complete the evacuation of Washington's army before the fog lifted in New York - and Washington himself, waiting for the last boat, had been captured? * ~ Henry Wiencek

The role of the Filipino historian must be the role of all historians. There is, of course, [Filipino history], but as rule, the role of the historian is to tell the truth-- in so far as documents are concerned. ~ Teodoro A. Agoncillo

The darkness, of which the historians complain, is essentially the darkness of their own ignorance. ~ George Sarton

It was one thing to talk of using technology to topple the authority of the aristocracy and the Church, but who or what would replace them? Diderot and the French revolutionaries had assumed it would be "the people." But as the nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet once wryly observed, "The people, in its highest ideal, is difficult to find in the people." As ~ Mark Kurlansky

There's a peculiar dichotomy in the nature of almost anyone who calls himself a historian. Such scholars all piously assure us that they're telling us the real truth about what really happened, but if you turn any competent historian over and look at his damp underside, you'll find a storyteller, and you can believe me when I tell you that no storyteller's ever going to tell a story without a few embellishments. Add to that the fact that we've all got assorted political and theological preconceptions that are going to color what we write, and you'll begin to realize that no history of any event is entirely reliable ... ~ David Eddings

I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante's Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen. ~ Philip Sidney

A natural historian is somebody who looks at something in terms of its relationship to the rest of the natural world. You look at things ecologically. When you see a cow on a feedlot, you don't just see a cow; you see a cow that is eating certain food. You follow that food and that food takes you back to a corn field. ~ Michael Pollan

The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig a fig and a spade a spade. He should yield to neither hatred nor affection, not should be unsparing and unpitying. He should be neither shy nor deprecating, but an impartial judge, giving each side all it deserves but no more. He should know in his writing no country and no city; he should bow to no authority and acknowledge no king. He should never consider what this or that man will think, but should state the facts as they really occurred. ~ Lucian

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian. ~ James Henry Breasted

Looking down on their glossy heads, I realized that they were indeed threatened; they were simply unaware of it. We are all vulnerable. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

What comes to your mind when you think of the word Transylvania, if you ponder it at all? What comes to my mind are mountains of savage beauty, ancient castles, werewolves, and witches - a land of magical obscurity. How, in short, am I to believe I will still be in Europe, on entering such a realm? I shall let you know if it's Europe or fairyland, when I get there. First, Snagov - I set out tomorrow. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

Personally, speaking as a historian and a storyteller, when it comes to inaccuracy in historical fictioneering, I follow the Shakespeare principle: I'm willing to overlook gobs of mistaken detail if the poetic valence is basically correct. ~ Rick Perlstein

The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless. ~ E.H. Carr

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray ... We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian. ~ Winston Churchill

But, as historian Gerda Lerner has pointed out, it is a shared characteristic of women's history - or the real history of any marginalized group - to be lost and discovered, lost again and re-discovered, re-lost and re-re-discovered, until the margins have transformed the center. As in a tree or a seed, the margins are where the growth is. Who would want to be anywhere else? ~ Gloria Steinem

In the human world, Dylan was headstrong and quick tempered. Like a live wire, sparking and glowing beside the paleness of everything else in Kara's life ~ Samantha Boyette

The real point of me isn't that I'm good looking. It's that I'm clever. I've got a brain! I would rather be called a highly intelligent historian than a gorgeous pouting one. ~ Niall Ferguson

One day I hoped some thoughtful historian would point out the close connection between the Mercedes-Benz motor car and Germany's favorite dictator and that the Lord would find a way to pay these bastards back for their help in bringing the Nazis to power and keeping them there. ~ Philip Kerr

The historian always oversimplifies, and hastily selects a manageable minority of facts and faces out of a crowd of souls and events whose multitudinous complexity he can never quite embrace or comprehend. ~ Will Durant

I'm not a historian, and I wouldn't want to be. I want to change the world. Attack the elite. Overturn the hierarchy. Look at my stories and you'll notice that the villains are always, always, those in power. The heroes are the little people. I hate the establishment. Always have, always will. ~ Terry Deary

During part of 1941 and 1942, when the Luftwaffe was busy in Russia, the German radio regaled its home audience with stories of devastating air raids on London. Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purpose of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they? The answer is: If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls they didn't happen. ~ George Orwell

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind. ~ Samuel E. Morison

We are often prophets to others only because we are our own historians. ~ Sophie Swetchine

Those who are in the orbit, but nonetheless on the edges, can often be the real discoverers. It was why at times, the journalist, the historian and even the novelist paints the fullest picture of an era ~ Bob Woodward