"The knowledge of our own history is our memory, and so the recorded history of a nation is the memory of the nation: woe to the country and people that forget it; an infant people has no history, as a child has a short and transient memory: the strong man and the strong nation feel the pulsation of the past in the life of the present: their memory is vital, long and strong. Neglect of historical study and knowledge is to a nation what the loss of memory is to a man—a sign of old age and decrepitude, or the effect of some terrible disease in an individual; it is in a nation a sign of lost independence in manners and ways of thought—a moral decrepitude waxed old and ready to vanish away; or perhaps in this case also the result of some terrible convulsion—a wave of revolution rolling over the land, overthrowing laws and institutions, and washing away old landmarks, as you may see in the France of this day."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Historians from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomUniversity of Oxford facultyAnglican bishopsEditors from England
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
'The Anglo-Saxon Constitution', p. 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Stubbs
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
William Stubbs
William Stubbs HonFRSE (21 June 1825 – 22 April 1901) was an English historian and Anglican bishop. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford between 1866 and 1884. He was Bishop of Chester from 1884 to 1889 and Bishop of Oxford from 1889 to 1901.
50 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by William Stubbs →
Related Quotes
"A national polity is not the creation of a single brain or of a royal commission of brains, but grows with the growth…"
"It is generally agreed that no one has ever edited medieval texts more beautifully or gracefully; no one has more unb…"
"Nor shall I be going so far as to anticipate what I shall have to lay before you by and by if I say now that I do tra…"
"It is far from easy to determine the mutual relations of the courts of the hundred and shire, and those of the manor …"
"More satisfying because more decisive has been the critical treatment of the medieval writers, parallel with the new …"
"Stubbs is more compelling than his evidence demands and more fascinating than his subject would predict... Even at hi…"
"It is that the essence of the historical study is in the working out the continuity of the subject, while the essence…"
"National character may be regarded as the result of national history, or national history as the development of natio…"
"England alone has a history in which ancient freedom has made its way through, and utilised all that is good in feuda…"
"In sound Stubbs was a gaudier Macaulay, a subtler Carlyle. His was not (nor, of course, was Ranke's) the "naked truth…"