T Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with T. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“The historian is a prophet looking backwards.”
Source: Philosophical Fragments
“The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.”
“The historian is never more himself than when he is searching his mind for a general statement that shall in itself give the hint of its own underlying complexity.”
Source: The Whig interpretation of history
“The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.”
“The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.”
Source: The Historian's Craft
“The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin.”
Source: The Cycles Of American History: Updated Edition―A Political Historian's Reflection on Two Centuries of Pragmatism vs Idealism
“The historian Meike Wöhlert has analyzed and compared the judgments rendered by courts responsible for malicious acts of treason in five cities. Although her research only deals with registered cases and not unofficial ones, the results suggest that the telling of political jokes was a mass phenomenon beyond state control. In 61 percent of official cases, joke-tellers were let off with a warning, alcohol consumption often being cited as an extenuating circumstance. (People who had had one too many in bars were considered only partially responsible for their actions, and because most of the popular jokes that made it to court had been told in bars, the verdicts were accordingly lenient.)”
Source: Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
“The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.”
“The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave.”
“The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.”
“The historian of science may be tempted to claim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. even more important, during revolutions, scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.”
“The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.”
Source: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition
“The historian ought to be an educated person, writing for other educated people about something which they don't know about, but wish to know about in a way that they can understand.”
“The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance; he is perpetually confronted with his own humiliating inability to interpret his material correctly; he is, in a sense that no other writer is, in bondage to that material.”
“The historian records, but the novelist creates.”
“The historian’s task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.”
“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.”
“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
“The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.”
Source: A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present
“The historian's first duties are sacrilege and the mocking of false gods. They are his indispensable instruments for establishing the truth.”
“The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Lucian (Illustrated)
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself.”
Source: The History of the Russian Revolution
“The historic function of a Senator from Oregon is to drive all the other Senators mad.”
Source: The Lathe Of Heaven
“The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.”
“The historic idea that the devil tempts men had this remarkable effect, it produced the man of iron who fought; the modern idea of blaming his heredity or his circumstances produces the man who gives in at once.”
“The historic Lahaina fire overwhelmed the emergency services.”
“The historic Lahaina town joined the Hawaiian spirits in August 2023.”
“The historic period in which we live is a period of reawakening to a commitment of higher values, a reawakening of individual purpose, and a reawakening of the longing to fulfill that purpose in life.”
Source: The Path of Least Resistance: Principles for Creating what You Want to Create
“The historic river flooding event hurricane Ian turned into was not widely reported by mainstream media.”
“The historic role of the Conservative Party is to use the leverage of its political and diplomatic skills to create a fresh balance between the different elements within the state at those times when, for one reason or another, their imbalance threatens to disrupt the orderly development of society”
“The historic role of the consumer has been nothing more than a giant maw at the end of the mass media's long conveyer belt, the all-absorbing Yin to the mass media's all-producing Yang....In the age of the internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a media outlet.”
“The historic town of Lahaina became united with the Hawaiian spirits on 8th August 2023.”
“The historic transition from Novice to Proficient to Adept was said to be accomplished virtually overnight by the progression from marijuana to peyote to lysergic acid. Instant mysticism had arrived. Before the court of law, hippies demanded freedom for LSD the way early Christians demanded freedom for the Eucharist.”
Source: The Excesses of God: Robinson Jeffers as a Religious Figure
“The historical accuracy of Qur’an’s socio-political predictions, perfect transmission through ages of its text, the unique eloquent language it carries and its accurate description of humans and nature should compel one to give it a sincere reading and reflect on its basic message. The basic message for us is that we are not created without any purpose. As per Islam, the purpose is to excel in our duties to Allah with a thankful attitude and be kind to all of His creations including humans, plants and animals we interact and live with.”
Source: Reflections on the Origins in the Post COVID-19 World
“The historical approach to understanding of scientific fact is what differentiates the scholar in science from the mere experimenter.”
“The historical circumstance of interest is that the tropical rain forests have persisted over broad parts of the continents since their origins as stronghold of the flowering plants 150 million years ago.”
“The historical data support one conclusion with unusual force: To invest with success, you must be a long-term investor.”
Source: Common Sense on Mutual Funds
“The historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism.”
Source: The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization
“The historical development of the work of anthropologists seems to single out clearly a domain of knowledge that heretofore has not been treated by any other science”
Source: A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911
“The historical division between the beautiful and the sublime indicates that an aesthetic experience is not necessarily linked to beauty, but can also be induced by the unpleasant, unbalanced, distorted, or even hideous.”
Source: Aesthetic Sustainability - Product Design and Sustainable Usage
“The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.”
Source: The Encyclicals of John Paul II
“The historical mission of our times is to re-invent the human—at the species level, with critical reflection, within the community of life-systems, in a time-developmental context, by means of story and shared dream experience.”
Source: The Great Work: Our Way into the Future
“The historical museum has to be very conservative and careful in its choices. The modern museum, on the other hand, has to be audacious, to take chances. It has to consider the probability that it would be wrong in a good many cases and take the consequences later.”
“The historical nature of the Desoto Solar Farm dictates that true events are documented in American historical records.”
“The historical novel gives us perspective on our modern lives and helps us connect with the story, which we are continuing ourselves.”
“The historical order is very interesting, but accidental and capricious; if we would to understand the growth of knowledge, we cannot be satisfied with accidents, we must explain how knowledge was gradually built up.”
Source: A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece
“The historical orthodox Christian faith is extremely wide and diverse.”
“The historical record contradicts the assumption that the Nazis sentenced large numbers of people to death during World War II for telling jokes. In the final phase of the Third Reich, some cases did receive capital sentences, but they were extreme exceptions to the rule. (We will return to them later.) The compilations of jokes that circulated in Germany after the war bore titles like Deadly Laughter and When Laughter Was Dangerous, but there is not much evidence that the jokes they contained were inevitably risky for the teller.”
Source: Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's Germany
“The historical record is unequivocal. The United States is ham-handed and brutal in conceiving and executing clandestine operations, and it is simply no good at espionage; its operatives never have enough linguistic and cultural knowledge of target countries to recruit spies effectively. The CIA also appears to be one of the most easily penetrated espionage organizations on the planet. From the beginning, it has repeatedly lost its assets to double agents.”
Source: Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope
“The historical record suggests that the transition to to a new hegemon has always been attended by what I have elsewhere called hegemonic war.”
Source: The Political Economy of International Relations