"We are apt to suppose that the facts in any branch of meaning must be in some way open to direct inspection, and that the statements of experts in each branch can be tested by their conformity with them ... The most striking thing about history is that the facts it purports to describe are past facts; and past facts are no longer accessible to direct inspection. We cannot, in a word, test the accuracy of historical statements by simply seeing whether they correspond to a reality which is independently known. How then can we test them? … ... we do so by referring to historical evidence. Although the past is not accessible to direct inspection it has left ample traces of itself in the present, in the shape of documents, buildings, coins, institutions, procedures and so forth."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
W. H. Walsh, An Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1958) pp. 19–20.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/History
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
History
316 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by History →
Related Quotes
"History held counterexamples to any facile rule."
"History is nothing whatever but a record of what living persons have done in the past."
"No honest historian can take part with--or against--the forces he has to study. To him even the extinction of the hum…"
"History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided."
"Escapists take refuge in cliches such as “Human nature will never change” and “History always repeats itself!” Nevert…"
"There are two ways of summing up world history, the inner way and the outer way. Both have been at the mercy of scrib…"
"The past is a pointer to the future. If we can understand the past and follow the trend of development throughout his…"
"History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living."
"The sciences we are familiar with have been installed in a number of great 'continents'. Before Marx, two such contin…"
"Psychology has a long past, but only a short history."