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Herbert Butterfield

Herbert Butterfield Biography

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“But the true historical fervour is the love of the past for the sake of the past… And behind it is the very passion to understand men in their diversity, the desire to study a bygone age in the things in which it differs from the present. The true historical fervour is that of the man for whom the exercise of historical imagination brings its own reward, in those inklings of a deeper understanding, those glimpses of a new interpretative truth, which are the historian’s achievement and his aesthetic delight”

HistoryHistorianHistoriographyEnglish Historian
Book:The Whig interpretation of history
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“Concerning alchemy it is more difficult to discover the actual state of things, in that the historians who specialise in this field seem sometimes to be under the wrath of God themselves; for, like those who write of the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy or on Spanish politics, they seem to become tinctured with the kind of lunacy they set out to describe.”

WritingKindSometimesStatesSeemsDifficultFieldsHistorianWrathControversyAlchemyLunacyWrath Of God
Book:The Origins of Modern Science
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“It has been said that the historian is the avenger, and that standing as a judge between the parties and rivalries and causes of bygone generations he can lift up the fallen and beat down the proud, and by his exposures and his verdicts, his satire and his moral indignation, can punish unrighteousness, avenge the injured or reward the innocent.”

Has BeensSaidCausesPartyMoralGenerationsJudgingProudBeatsStandingRewardsInnocentLiftsFallenSatireHistorianExposureInjuredRivalryIndignationVerdictAvengersMoral IndignationUnrighteousness
Author:Herbert Butterfield
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“Very strange bridges are used to make the passage from one state of things to another; we may lose sight of them in our surveys of general history, but their discovery is the glory of historical research. History is not the study of origins; rather it is the analysis of all the mediations by which the past was turned into our present.”

MayStatesPastUsedLosesStudyStrangeGloryResearchDiscoverySightHistoricalBridgesAnalysisPassagesSurveysMediationHistorical Research
Author:Herbert Butterfield
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“The Whig interpretation of history ... is the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”

IfsWritingHas BeensStoriesPastScienceCertainSidesPrinciplesHistorySuccessfulProgressProduceRevolutionPraiseTendenciesInterpretationHistorianProtestantsGlorification
Book:The Whig interpretation of history
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“But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness - each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked - each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”

GivingStillsSelfTodaySinCivilizationConflictHatredDeeperGladGiantsOrganizedWickedRighteousnessDelightedMenacePretextSelf RighteousnessAnimosity
Book:Christianity, Diplomacy and War
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“It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.”

WorldRealScienceChristianityModernRevolutionHistoricalMereInternalsMentalityEpisodesModern WorldMedievalRenaissanceReformationChristendomDisplacementEuropean HistoryAnachronismScientific Revolution
Author:Herbert Butterfield
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“Of all the intellectual hurdles which the human mind has confronted and has overcome in the last fifteen hundred years the one which seems to me to have been the most amazing in character and the most stupendous in the scope of its consequences is the one relating to the problem of motion.”

YearsMindHumansHas BeensCharacterProblemSeemsLastsIntellectualHundredConsequenceOvercomingHuman MindFifteenScopeMost AmazingHurdle
Book:The Origins of Modern Science
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