Historians

"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."

"¡Qué rico es ser boricua!"

"From the far reaches of the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River, the faithful approached the city of Mecca. All had the same objective to worship together at the most sacred shrine of Islam, the Kaaba in Mecca. One such traveler was Mansa Musa, Sultan of Mali in Western Africa. Mansa Musa had prepared carefully for the long journey he and his attendants would take. He was determined to travel not only for his own religious fulfillment, but also for recruiting teachers and leaders, so that his realms could learn more of the Prophet's teachings."

"The growing power of finance capital was not only important in all the ways economic historians have discussed — but as the basis of an entire liberal politics, a literal worldview."

"It is no exaggeration to say that the Economist embodied the most theoretically sophisticated — and unremitting — example of early laissez-faire thought. I try to reconstruct what this body of thought looked like, contextualizing it and the writers who espoused it in the pages of the Economist."

"Liberalism in this sense may be an invented tradition. But the idea that it has some basic democratic core, or that it tends internally towards the realization of democracy, is enduring. For the liberals in my book, democracy is a problem — to be resisted in the nineteenth century, through restrictions on voting based on property, education, and region; to be managed and contained in the twentieth century, when working-class pressure and the exigencies of total war became too powerful to resist."

"... it often gets scolded and cannot find a place of its own, almost because people invariably misunderstand its true nature."

"I have no intention of politicizing in the Bulgarian fashion. I am a Macedonian and this is how I see the position of my country: it is not Russia or Austria-Hungary that are the enemies of Macedonia, but Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia. Our country can be saved from ruin only by struggling fiercely against these states."

"I am a Macedonian. I write in the central Macedonian dialect, which from now on I shall always consider the Macedonian literary language."

"We Macedonians are Turkish subjects and interested in maintaining the unity of Turkey ... the Macedonian intelligentsia, if they examine their own interests, should for their own sake and the sake of their people devote all their moral strength to the prime task of maintaining the unity of Turkey."

"From the Macedonian point of view, the unification of all Macedonia with Bulgaria, Serbia or Greece is not desirable, but neither is it particularly frightening."

"What sort of new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been called Bulgarians? ... Macedonian as a nationality has never existed, they will say, and it does not exist now. There have always been two south Slav nationalities in Macedonia: Bulgarian and Serbian. So, any kind of Macedonian Slav revival is simply the empty concern of a number of fanatics who have no concept of South Slav history."

"If it is officially acknowledged that there are not several Slav nationalities in Macedonia, but only one, which is neither Bulgarian nor Serbian, and if Macedonia secedes as an independent Bishopric, Turkey will be immediately freed from interference in Macedonian affairs by the three neighboring states."

"Finally, many people will point out that our greatest misfortune is that we have no local Macedonian patriotism. If there were patriotism in Macedonia, we would think and work only for Macedonia. But now some of us still consider ourselves Bulgarian and link our interests with those of Bulgaria instead of studying our own country, Macedonia ..."

"The Macedonian national revival ... is basically the result of the competition between Bulgaria and Serbia over the Macedonian question."

"Perhaps you will lose your life.’ ‘Well, my life"

"I spend it."

"Never turn down a lucrative business opportunity."

"Shackleton was a tenacious man, no doubt, but his is a captivating story fit for Hollywood. But it is not a story fit to draw leadership lessons from."

"We confuse a good story for good leadership."

"The leaders we celebrate are the leaders we learn from. In other words, appearing to be a good leader rather than actually being one is the path to fame and promotion today."

"We have to learn to ignore the captains of crisis, the Shackletons, those who are lurching from one dramatic circumstance to another."

"Good leaders boast a mastery of their environment, a mastery gained by dedicated study, self-reflection, and a tenacious gathering of experience."

"I come from a Celtic background—Irish, English and Welsh—so I was surely bound to be a music lover! I was influenced by my father, a well-educated pianist and singer as well as a writer and lover of poetry. He’d come home in the evening and play the piano and sing, and from the time I was very small, he would read poetry to me in the evenings as well as sing me lullabies. That was a beautiful thing for my ear. My mother died just prior to my eighth birthday, so that affected my life. I attended Loreto Normanhurst in Sydney from Grade 6 to Form 5, which was a formative period of my life, especially when it comes to music, education and my call to religious life."

"My faith was nurtured by the nuns’ witness to Jesus and their authenticity. Boarding school life was, besides being a lot of fun, an oblique way of observing the religious life of a nun. Each morning we attended 7am Mass with the sisters, and shared evening prayer, which always included a hearty singing of a hymn with them in the chapel. I don’t know how many hundreds of hymns I would’ve sung at school! I came in time to think about the words of these hymns, particularly where children and young people are concerned. This set me up to be a careful composer of words as well as melodies for hymns. I remember, too, the spiritual formation we received through processions. One such was the feast of Corpus Christi where the local parishes joined us annually in the grounds of Loreto Normanhurst to process in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. It was a ritual that informed my interest in liturgical ceremony."

"My violin and piano teacher, Mother Lua Byrne ibvm, was a great influence. She was a very fresh-faced, smiling woman, intelligent and kind, and drew the best out of her students. She always had that sense of loving what she was doing, and she loved us. So it made a big difference to a small child to have such a beautiful woman as my music teacher.She brought my gifts out of me in a great way so that by the time I finished school, I was leading the school orchestra, I was music captain, and I was carrying the two instruments of piano and violin at the top levels. She’d prepared me well for performance studies at Sydney Conservatorium in 1953. It looked as if that would set me out on a career in music and I was happy for that. She introduced me to ethnomusicology in Form 5, and it became a life-long interest for me, with implications for pursuing the connections between music, spirituality, liturgy and culture."

"I had a friend called Joan MacKerras, the sister of the famous international musician and conductor Sir Charles MacKerras (deceased). Even though she didn’t attend the school, Joan received lessons from this ‘famous’ Mother Lua. So one of my favourite pieces, even to this day, is the Bach Double Violin Concerto in D minor, which the two of us would play. The way Bach’s written it, particularly the second movement, is like a conversation between two violins. I love that piece, and I saw it later as God and the soul and this reciprocal relationship going on between the two of us. What’s God saying to me? What am I saying to God? I often return to it in retreat periods. It speaks profoundly to me of the God who is Love calling me to respond in love."

"Despite the fascination of a life in music, particularly as an orchestral player, I felt a deeper call to religious life. During my boarding school years, as mystifying as the sisters’ vocation seemed to me as a child, it presented as a very worthwhile way to live a fulfilled and spiritual life. Prayers that I had come to pray regularly, which were significant in my decision, included the ‘Peace Prayer of St Francis’ and the ‘Prayer of St Ignatius for Generosity’. I chose to follow Jesus in loving service along the path of Mary Ward’s Loreto sisters—to take up the opportunity to be with people who have shared the same faith, who cared and wanted to give their life for others. It seemed a generous thing to do. And in that generous movement, you felt there was love born in you at that time for what you were going to do, following the steps of Jesus, and believing strongly in the value of this way of life."

"I wasn’t quite 18 years old when I joined the Novitiate in Ballarat. In 1957, my first mission was teaching in a kindergarten in Brisbane. I taught nearly everything through the piano, including numbers and religion—the children loved it! After eight years in the Order teaching primary and lower secondary students in a range of subjects, I entered the Bachelor of Music course at the University of Melbourne, transferring from performance to a specialisation in music education, including a year of a Diploma of Education. My time in Melbourne was extremely rich and formative. The illustrious priest musician Dr Percy Jones was one of my lecturers, a highly prominent international figure in church music. He invited me later to turn my hand to writing music in a folk style, and that’s how some of my music came to be published. My time at the Melbourne Conservatorium prepared me well for a return to Loreto Normanhurst Sydney in 1964 to become Director of Music, which lasted 10 years."

"By 1974, I was missioned to Loreto College, Brisbane, in leadership and administration. During this time, I learnt and experienced the richness of parish community and liturgical prayer. I travelled to London to take up postgraduate studies in music at the Institute of Education London University, which opened me to a wider experience in both the academic and performance fields. I specialised in choral and orchestral conducting in summer programs, attended festivals, and set up field trips to places of excellence in liturgy and music in England, France, Italy and Spain—all to widen my knowledge and cultural experience. In 1983–84, I undertook a Masters in Liturgical Studies in Washington DC with a special interest in music. This program set me up to find how ritual and music can complement one another in a profound way, as well as giving me the history and foundations of liturgical and sacramental theology. It was truly enriching."

"On my return to Australia in 1985, a 12-year period of teaching in two institutions commenced—Mercy Teachers’ College (later Australian Catholic University) and Yarra Theological Union. In both, I wrote my own courses ranging across philosophy of music, 20th-century history, liturgy and music, with a particular interest in Australian music, spirituality and culture. I was particularly fortunate to work alongside the founder of the only Bachelor of Church Music course available in Australia at the time, the internationally acclaimed Melbourne musician Roger Heagney."

"A key formative period in my musical life in the Church of Melbourne came in 1988 with the invitation to join the Office for Worship team. This place was truly a centre of vitality, learning, collaboration and pastoral leadership, headed at the time by this incredibly erudite liturgist, professor, spiritual director and pastoral human being, Fr Frank O’Loughlin. He provided leadership through first-class theological input into parishes and assisting with resources to meet their pastoral needs. Margaret Smith SGS, liturgist extraordinaire, partnered me in visiting local parishes, providing workshops on the revised rites of the church and the liturgical seasons."

"In 2005 I accepted the invitation to be the writer of our revised modern Constitution Volume 11 for the Loreto sisters worldwide. With such a ministry, there was not much time for music, but I found composing poetic prose a music of its own kind. The style of the document was challenging in that it was to be of spiritual inspiration as well as legally accurate. There is an important line in that document: ‘Mission is at the heart of who we are, and love is the driving force that urges us on.’ So, to answer your question, I think it’s love. The love of education, of seeing people—young and old—grow. My life has been not one of being tucked away in a convent, but very much associated with people beyond. And what brings it together is my faith, and my music."

"It’s very simple. It speaks to people, because it’s about God’s love for each of us—I have loved you with an everlasting love, I will never forsake you, there is no need to fear. It comes directly out of my going to confession to a priest, and he said, ‘I don’t think God is worrying about half of that. Come as you are.’ People use the song everywhere, including in prisons. It’s extraordinary the amount of correspondence I’ve received over the years. People don’t think I’ve done anything else!"

"You are known for having written and composed the song ‘Come as you are’. What is the back story to this song?"

"As the years advance and my energies fade, I still love to be involved in whatever way I can in supporting and encouraging younger people to follow through their dreams. I have eclectic tastes, a deep love of words and music, and love of my way of life—a vocation of loving service in companionship and faith. It’s not so much what I do now; it’s what kind of a person am I in the doing. I wrote a line in the Loreto Modern Spiritual document that says, ‘When energy fails, the ministry of being is as authentic as the ministry of doing.’"

"It’s a time for gathering in and sorting what may be useful to others from my store of life experience—the failures and uncertainties, the lost opportunities, and the glorious moments. I’m happy that I am still able to do something, and that something is to share my love of music and my love of my way of life and faith. Mary Ward was an extraordinary person, and some of her quotes were so impressive, but one of them is ‘Women in time to come will do much.’ And we live with that responsibility to use our gifts to the full in whatever way we can."

"Volentem me parvo subvectum navigio oram tranquilli litoris stringere et minutos de priscorum, ut quidam ait, stagnis pisciculos legere, in altum, frater Castali, laxari vela compellis relictoque opusculo, quod intra manus habeo, id est, de adbreviatione chronicorum, suades, ut nostris verbis duodecem Senatoris volumina de origine actusque Getarum ab olim et usque nunc per generationes regesque descendentem in uno et hoc parvo libello choartem: dura satis imperia et tamquam ab eo, qui pondus operis huius scire nollit, inposita. Nec illud aspicis, quod tenuis mihi est spiritus ad inplendam eius tam magnificam dicendi tubam: super omne autem pondus, quod nec facultas eorundem librorum nobis datur, quatenus eius sensui inserviamus, sed, ut non mentiar, ad triduanam lectionem dispensatoris eius beneficio libros ipsos antehac relegi. Quorum quamvis verba non recolo, sensus tamen et res actas credo me integre retinere. Ad quos et ex nonnullis historiis Grecis ac Latinis addedi convenientia, initium finemque et plura in medio mea dictione permiscens."

"Post quorum obitum cum Bleda germano Hunnorum successit in regno, et, ut ante expeditionis, quam parabat, par foret, augmentum virium parricidio quaerit, tendens ad discrimen omnium nece suorum. Sed librante iustitia detestabili remedio crescens deformes exitus suae crudelitatis invenit. Bleda enim fratre fraudibus interempto, qui magnae parti regnabat Hunnorum, universum sibi populum adunavit, aliarumque gentium, quas tunc in dicione tenebat, numerositate collecta, primas mundi gentes Romanos Vesegothasque subdere praeoptabat."

"Vir in concussione gentium natus in mundo, terrarum omnium metus, qui, nescio qua sorte, terrebat cuncta formidabili de se opinione vulgata. Erat namque superbus incessu, huc atque illuc circumferens oculos, ut elati potentia ipso quoque motu corporis appareret; bellorum quidem amator, sed ipse manu temperans, consilio validissimus, supplicantium exorabilis, propitius autem in fide semel susceptis; forma brevis, lato pectore, capite grandiore, minutis oculis, rarus barba, canis aspersus, semo nasu, teter colore, origenis suae signa restituens. Qui quamvis huius esset naturae, ut semper magna confideret, addebat ei tamen confidentia gladius Martis inventus, sacer apud Scytharum reges semper habitus."

"Post victorias tantarum gentium, post orbem, si consistatis, edomitum, ineptum iudicaveram tamquam ignaros rei verbis acuere. Quaerat hoc aut novus ductor aut inexpertus exercitus. Nec mihi fas est aliquid vulgare dicere, nec vobis oportet audire. Quid autem aliud vos quam bellare consuetum? Aut quid viro forti suavius, quam vindicta manu querere? Magnum munus a natura animos ultione satiare. Adgrediamur igitur hostem alacres: audaciores sunt semper, qui inferunt bellum. Adunatas dispicite dissonas gentes: indicium pavoris est societate defendi. En ante impetum nostrum terroribus iam feruntur, excelsa quaerunt, tumulos capiunt et sera paenitudine in campos monitiones efflagitant. Nota vobis sunt quam sint levia Romanorum arma: primo etiam non dico vulnere, sed ipso pulvere gravantur, dum in ordine coeunt et acies testudineque conectunt. Vos confligite perstantibus animis, ut soletis, despicientesque eorum aciem Alanos invadite, in Vesegothas incumbite. Inde nobis cita victoria quaerere, unde se continet bellum. Abscisa autem nervis mox membra relabuntur, nec potest stare corpus, cui ossa subtraxeris. Consurgant animi, furor solitus intumescat. Nunc consilia, Hunni, nunc arma depromite: aut vulneratus quis aduersarii mortem reposcat aut inlaesus hostium clade satietur. Victuros nulla tela conveniunt, morituros et in otio fata praecipitant. Postremo cur fortuna Hunnos tot gentium victores adseret, nisi ad certaminis huius gaudia praeparasset? Quis denique Meotidarum iter maiores nostros aperuit tot saeculis clausum secretum? Quis adhuc inermibus cedere faciebat armatos? Faciem Hunnorum non poterat ferre adunata collectio. Non fallor eventu: hic campus est, quem nobis tot prospera promiserunt. Primus in hoste tela coiciam. si quis potuerit Attila pugnante otio ferre, sepultus est."