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Herbert Butterfield

Herbert Butterfield Quotes

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Famous Herbert Butterfield Quotes

“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.”

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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.”

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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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