Historian

"History presents an historian with the task of producing a dialogue between the past and the present. But as these temporal co-ordinates cannot be fixed, history becomes a continuous interaction between the historian and the past."

"The choice of narrative is an important way of making the facts speak. But this was rarely recognised by nineteenth-century historians, many of whom were oblivious to the nature and consequences of the narrative choices available to them. They believed, instead, that at some point all facts would be known and thus to provide an archival truth. There are traces of this today where narrative choices, centred for instance on biography, style or social history, stem from the belief that an empirical reiteration of the facts presents reality."

"What really happens is that the author discards the human persona but replaces it by an 'objective¿ one; the authorial subject is as evident as ever, but it has become an objective subject … At the level of discourse objectivity, or the absence of any clues to the narrator, turns out to be particular form of fiction, where the historian tries to give the impression that the referent is speaking for itself."

"Take one of Voltaire's swift shining shafts of wit: "History is after all only a pack of tricks we play on the dead." Ah, yes, how true it is, we say; and we are astonished that Voltaire could have been so profound. Then we realize that he did not really mean it. To him it was a witticism intended to brand dishonest historians, whereas we perceive that it formulated, in the neatest possible way, a profound truth — the truth that all historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind."

"HISTORIAN, n. A broad-gauge gossip."

"Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul."

"In a certain sense all men are historians."

"Historians . . . proceed inferentially. They investigate evidence much as lawyers cross-question witnesses in a court of law, extracting from that evidence information which it does not explicitly contain."

"The treatment of the period of Reconstruction reflects small credit upon American historians as scientists. We have too often a deliberate attempt so to change the facts of history that the story will make pleasant reading for Americans."

"Historians are really great at predicting the past. But the future is for prophets, and the track records of most prophets is dismal."

"For her class of people, a “professional historian” is a historian with academic status. They are very status-conscious and constantly pull rank, especially when faced with informed arguments. For a scholar, this is weak, but for sophomores, it is uppermost in their minds: climbing the status ladder. When you know the academic circles, you become far less inclined to be over-awed by academic status: many professors have obvious ideological prejudices and bend their findings to suit their presuppositions. Moreover, in many countries to some extent, and certainly in India, scholars in the humanities are selected for ideological conformity with the dominant school. After nearly half a century, this has led to a situation where a post of “eminence” is simply equivalent with ideological conformity, at least passively (not raising your head), often actively (furthering the dominant paradigm)."

"The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything."

"Do you really believe ... that everything historians tell us about men – or about women – is actually true? You ought to consider the fact that these histories have been written by men, who never tell the truth except by accident.”"

"The historian must have...some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead."

"[T]his historian who seeks to mine the various quarries of the past in the belief that good history is a good foundation for a better present and future."

"Though I cannot claim to be an authority on the subject, I myself have been horrified at the way in which reputable historians have accepted as evidence isolated statements by one peasant extracted under interrogation and torture."

"[H]istorians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. So my profession, which has always been mixed up in politics, becomes an essential component of nationalism."

"The long historian of my country's woes."

"The historian’s task is to present what actually happened. The more purely and completely he achieves this, the more perfectly has he solved this problem. A simple presentation is at the same time the primary indispensable condition of his work and the highest achievement he will be able to attain. Regarded in this way, he seems to be merely receptive and productive, not active and creative."

"There can be no one historical narrative that renders perfect justice (just as perhaps there is no judicial outcome that can capture the complexity of history)…. [T]he historian would like to do justice; the judge must establish some version of history . . . . If good judges and historians shun the tasks, they will be taken on by prejudiced or triumphalist ones."

"This world tendency to make history the vehicle of certain definite political, social and economic ideas, which reign supreme in each country for the time being, is like a cloud, at present no bigger than a man’s hand, but which may soon grow in volume, and overcast the sky, covering the light of the world by an impenetrable gloom. The question is therefore of paramount importance, and it is the bounden duty of every historian to guard himself against the tendency, and fight it by the only weapon available to him, namely by holding fast to truth in all his writings irrespective of all consequences. A historian should not trim his sail according to the prevailing wind, but ever go straight, keeping in view the only goal of his voyage—the discovery of truth. (p. xxx)"

"Interpretations of the past are subject to change in response to new evidence, new questions asked of the evidence, new perspectives gained by the passage of time. [...] The unending quest of historians for understanding the past — that is, "revisionism" — is what makes history vital and meaningful."

"I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting."

"The historian... has to conform to official interpretations of the past, the philosopher to dogmas, the writer to stereotypes of human action, the craftsman to “production-schedules."

"All historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others."

"The forensic historian . . . searches the past for material applicable to a current issue. The purpose of the advocate . . . is to use the past for the elucidation of the present, to solve some contemporary problem or, most often, to carry an argument. It is the past put in the service of winning the case at bar."

"Historians must break out of the prison of ideas."

"Classical historians take as their subject the conflict between great political powers, for example, Greece and Persia (Herodotus), Athens and Sparta (Thucydides), Rome and Carthage (Livy), Rome and Greece (Polybius), or the struggle for power within a particular state, for example, Athens (Thucydides), republican Rome (Sallust), imperial Rome (Tacitus)."

"Der Historiker ist ein rückwärts gekehrter Prophet."

"Some historians' reluctance to utilize victim testimony in their con-struction of Holocaust history may be a result of a prejudice among them to utilize only 'official documents' or to combat accusations of Holocaust deniers by being able to demonstrate the facts through the words of the Nazis themselves."

"Unfortunately, far too many historians these days don't believe in evidence. They argue that since absolute truth must always elude the historian's grasp 'evidence' is inevitably nothing but a biased selection of suspect 'facts.' Worse yet, rather than diminishing the entire historical under-taking as impossible, these same people use their disdain for evidence as a license to propose all manner of politicized historical fantasies or appealing fictions on the grounds that these are just as 'true' as any other account. This is absurd nonsense. Reality exists and history actually occurs. The historian's task is to try to discover as accurately as possible what took place. Of course, we can never possess absolute truth, but that still must be the ideal goal that directs historical scholarship. The search for truth and the advance of human knowledge are inseparable: comprehension and civilization are one."

"I would not care whether truth is pleasant or unpleasant, and in consonance with or opposed to current views. I would not mind in the least whether truth is, or is not, a blow to the glory of my country. If necessary, I shall bear in patience the ridicule and slander of friends and society for the sake of preaching truth. But still I shall seek truth, understand truth, and accept truth. This should be the firm resolve of a historian."

"“I have looked at Nauvoo as a writer, not as a historian. There is a difference. A writer lives by ideas, while a historian isn’t allowed to have one."

"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."