Best past & historian Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith. A destroyer of faith — particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith — places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities. Do not spread disease germs!”

Past Spiritual Church Leader Masters Disease Weakness Eternity Delight Spread Faithful Serving Historian Scholar Employed Repent Pointing Germs Frailty Destroyers Jeopardy Great Spiritual

Author:Boyd K. Packer

“It may be said of many palaeontologists, as Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper said recently of 18th century historians: "Their most serious error was to measure the past by the present".”

May Said Past Science Century Serious Errors Professors Historian 18th Century

Author:D. V. Ager

“To an art historian a Giotto is a 14th Century painting. To an artist it was painted yesterday. We free ourselves from the past when we see it freshly.”

Art Past Artist Century Painting Masters Yesterday Historian Giotto

Author:Walter Darby Bannard

“Every historian loves the past or should do. If not, he has mistaken his vocation; but it is a short step from loving the past to regretting that it has ever changed. Conservatism is our greatest trade-risk; and we run psychoanalysts close in the belief that the only "normal" people are those who cause no trouble either to themselves or anybody else.”

People Ifs Should Running Past Belief Causes Steps Risk Trouble Changed Regret Normal Trade Historian Mistaken Vocation Conservatism

Author:A. J. P. Taylor

“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.”

Men Doe Has Beens Art Past Opinion Share Building Periods Models Instinct Objectives Affected Works Of Art Historian Transformed Subjective Building Up Popular Opinion

Author:Georg Brandes

“The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”

Ifs Past Winning Enemy Safe Convinced Historian Sparks Messiah Redeemer Antichrist

Book:Illuminations

Source: Illuminations

“The first job of the historian and of the journalist is to find facts. Not the only job, perhaps not the most important, but the first. Facts are the cobblestones from which we build roads of analysis, mosaic tiles that we fit together to compose pictures of past and present. There will be disagreement about where the road leads and what reality or truth is revealed by the mosaic picture. The facts themselves must be checked against all the available evidence. But some are round and hard--and the most powerful leaders in the world can trip over them. So can writers, dissidents and saints.”

“More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.”

Should Mean Ideas Past Attention Masters Needed Circumstances Intellectual Scientist Track Historian Deliberate Biologist History Of Science Right Track Milieu Wrong Turn

Author:Ronald Fisher

“[The taxidermist is] a historian, dealing with an animal's past; the zookeeper is a politician, dealing with an animal's present; and everyone else is a citizen who must decide on that animal's future (...) The indifference of the many, combined with the active hatred of the few, has sealed the fate of animals.”

Past Animal Fate Citizens Politician Hatred Active Indifference Historian Zookeepers

Book:Beatrice & Virgil

Source: Beatrice & Virgil

“Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.”

May Past Understanding Views Possibility Prepared Point Of View Convinced Thinker Historian Superiority Adequate Liable

Book:What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies

Source: What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies

“Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.”

Way Two Helping Use Past Growing Productions Historian Traffic Biographies Two Ways Past Present Biographers

Author:Claire Tomalin

“In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.”

People Stories Past Purpose Vision Musician Historian Our Past True Story True Purpose Visions Of The Future

Book:African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston

Source: African Rhythms: The Autobiography of Randy Weston

“The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past.”

Past Differences Moral Judgment Ordinary Affair Practicals Reactions Contemporary Historian Provoking Implications Narrators Moral Judgment

Author:Geoffrey Barraclough

“In the West the past is like a dead animal. It is a carcass picked at by the flies that call themselves historians and biographers. But in my culture the past lives. My people feel this way in part because death does not separate us from our ancestors.”

People Way Feels Doe Past Culture Animal West Historian Ancestor Past Life Biographers

Author:Miriam Makeba

“It is a grave error for historians of literature to interpret the national spirit of the age in an oversimplified manner, ignoring the complexity of various cultural and life processes. Instead of using their imagination, they try to read the future by observing the hands of a clock which is still busy measuring the past.”

Trying Stills Hands Age Past Spirit Literature Process Imagination Errors Busy Various Graves Clock Complexity Historian Observing Measuring

Author:Mieczyslaw Jastrun

“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.”

Trying Firsts Two Past Courses Process Conditions Development Periods Future Scientist Method Endeavor Historian Spheres Minors Surveys Sequels Alterations

Book:If I lived my life again

Source: If I lived my life again

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