Historians From The United States

"Amy Bix's fine book, carefully researched and gracefully written, surveys the extent of everyday hardship during the . She concentrates on the debates over in the United States, debates that were "entwined with particular musings about the meaning of American history, the western frontier, and a sense of national destiny" (p. 8). She convincingly describes the lives and emotions of employed and unemployed Americans. She also summarizes some of the social research conducted during the depression years."

"In his The Horse the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes shaped the Modern World, published in 2007, Anthony presented at length a demilitarized version of the Kurgan theory. Although on its central thesis we are in plain disagreement, I find Anthony’s book lively, imaginative and on many points very helpful. Especially valuable is his survey and synthesis of what Soviet and Russian archaeologists have discovered about the Neolithic and Bronze Age steppe. It will be obvious how much I am indebted to his work, and I regret that this chapter must focus on what I find wrong with it."

"The critical point is that language and ethnic shift can take place without radical change in the material particulars of life and with an amount of change in the gene pool so small as to be for all practical purposes undetectable. We should not replace the fallacy of assigning all significant culture change to migration with the fallacy of thinking that language shift and the spread of new ethnic self-identification occur only with major or radical cultural transformations."

"They might have moved several times, perhaps by sea, from the Western Pontic steppes to south-eastern Europe to western Anatolia to Greece, making their trail hard to find."

"In David Anthony’s pithy phrase, ‘The Rig Veda was a ritual canon, not a racial manifesto. If you sacrificed in the right way to the right gods, which required performing the great traditional prayers in the traditional language, you were an Aryan, otherwise you were not.’"

"Anthony explicitly admits, “at many critical points” (p. 465) it is the linguistic model that guides the archaeological interpretation rather than the reverse. Such a procedure almost necessarily means that the archaeological record is consistently manipulated to fit the linguistic model that it is meant to confirm; the reasoning is circular. What is initially stated as a hypothesis or tentative linguistic identification on one page becomes an established fact a few pages later, bending the archaeological record to fit the model. Nevertheless, the book’s enduring value will be its rich and vivid synthesis of an extremely complex corpus of archaeological data from Neolithic times through the Bronze Age, stretching from the Balkans to Central Asia. Anthony writes extremely well and masterfully describes material culture remains, teasing out incredible amounts of information on the nature and scale of subsistence activities, social structure, and even ritual practices..."

"The rise, fall and recovery of migration models is partly embedded in paradigm shifts in archaeological theory, with all the socio-political factors of academic competition that are entailed. The insistent clamour of the homeless, the migrant and the refugee is rarely still and we cannot but face its consequences on an academic as well as a human level."

"From a common Proto-Aryan speech we infer also a common Proto-Aryan homeland. . . . Where was this primitive home from which the Aryan blood went out in so many streams over the earth?"

"Just when it appeared that the Pontic Steppe theory of Indo-European origins was about to be consigned to the dustbin of history, together with Marija Gimbutas’ reputation for her later work among all but the most ardent feminists, it was resurrected by the anthropologist, David W. Anthony, in his 2007 book The Horse, the Wheel and Language, portentously subtitled How Bronze-Aged Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. ...we are in the presence of a self-referencing and self-promoting clique of linguistic young-earth creationists, including a heavily biased linguist on a mission to keep alive the sacred flame of Indo-European exceptionalism and to deny its external relations (Ringe), a jovial bullshit merchant (Anthony) who never lets any inconvenient empirical evidence get in the way of narrative and two groupies (Lewis and Pereltsvaig) whose excessive zeal in attacking anyone who argues for an earlier date unwittingly turns the spotlight on their shabby little guild."

"There is no evidence that James worshipped his brother or considered him divine. His emphasis in his letter was not upon the person of Jesus but upon what Jesus taught."

"Islam has struck deeper roots on the coast, and has tended to be at its most self- conscious among trading communities. There has often been tension, and sometimes devastating warfare, between the coast and the interior. Although it is attractive to think of Islam as a causative factor in this conflict, it would probably be more correct to think of it as deriving from primary economic and political differences, with a rather more self- conscious Islam providing from time to time a convenient rallying banner for the coastal states."

"Christianity, as we came to know it, is Paul and Paul is Christianity."

"It has sometimes been assumed, with extraordinary unconcern for the historical evidence, that the more self-conscious Muslims of the coast were the greatest enemies of the Dutch Protestants, while the less firm Muslims ruling the interior kingdom of Mataram more readily became the tools of the Europeans. But this is simply not so."

"Who and whatever James was, so was Jesus."

"In the course of the centuries, Islam spread throughout the Javanese population, until its adoption by the last large district, the “east hook,” was accomplished in the late eighteenth century. This process seems on the whole to have been peaceful, or as peaceful as it could have been in a period of Javanese history characterized by almost incessant warfare. Conversion by arms may have occurred when a Muslim dignitary defeated a non­ Muslim, whereupon the vanquished and his people would presumably have embraced Islam."

"It’s education primarily that takes me to Olympia ... I find such a woeful lack of people who can and will speak for the schools. Too many sincere people just don’t know what they're talking about ... just don't understand the problems."

"She was a powerful, experienced legislative voice for education."

"Loyalty to the person of the king was the glue that unified an English kingdom so recently forged from separate peoples."

"Æthelred was the only king in Western Christendom in 1002 who could reasonably expect that his decrees would be conveyed throughout his kingdom and perhaps even obeyed."

"One suspects that many landowners thought Æthelred overly eager to find reasons to confiscate property."

"It gives you a bit of a heart twist to walk right up to the courthouse and put your name opposite that of a man – not whom you’re going to marry – but opposite the name of a man who's your friend – and who want the same job you could fill."

"Academic historians are by nature revisionists."

"The poem is literature, however, not history. As such it provides a window on the mentality and the values of its audience. Loyalty is lauded, betrayal and failure to fulfill one’s duty condemned."

"What is the scientific method, and when, where, and how did it become, as the kids say, a thing? Authoritative definitions of “the scientific method” often state that it consists of a set of procedures including observation, experimentation, and the formation and testing of hypotheses by inductive and deductive reasoning. Such accounts, as a rule, ascribe science’s successes to the application of these procedures ever since the seventeenth century and the work of people such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. But neither Bacon nor Newton nor anyone else in the seventeenth century would have recognized the phrase; moreover, neither would have agreed with current standard definitions. Bacon, for instance, rejected deductive reasoning as the bad old Aristotelian approach, and Newton, author of one of the boldest hypotheses in the history of science—the universal aether—denied any role for hypotheses in his science, famously declaring “hypotheses non fingo” (I frame no hypotheses)."

"W is to be found the best text of ? Of the many s before the public, which one is the one to be preferred? These are questions which are pretty certain to be asked by him who is about to take up for the first time the study of that author's dramatic productions. It may and it sometimes does cause a feeling of disappointment when the answer is made—as no other answer can fairly be made—that not only is there no best edition of Shakespeare's works, but there never can be and never will be one."

"As a faculty member, I feel a great intellectual advantage in being in continual conversation with students, who arrive new and clear-eyed, asking foundational questions. I’ve found that giving them the benefit of my perspective means also accepting from them the benefit of theirs."

"The appreciation which gladly recognized Chaucer as standing at the head of all living English poets never, to our knowledge, inspired a solitary disciple to place upon record the slightest particular in the story of his career. His superiority remained unchallenged during the century that followed his death. Yet no account of him on even the most insignificant scale was even attempted till after he had been in his grave almost a hundred and fifty years. Nothing could show more pointedly how alien was the spirit of the past to that of the present."

"In Darwin’s version of Darwinism, natural selection played a key role, but so too did various living agencies, notably one that Darwin called “use and disuse” (using or failing to use a limb or organ, which, he assumed, would have heritable effects) and another that he named “sexual selection.”"

"}} in the course of time became the literary autocrat of his age. He was disliked by many; but there was no one to dispute his supremacy. As he was conspicuously identified with the of the , it was inevitable that his advocacy of it and his example should affect in some measure the belief and practice of his contemporaries."

"Whereas Adam Smith worried about the confining and stultifying effects of commercial society, his 21st-century acolytes, cheerfully devoid of skepticism, see nothing but empowerment all the way."

"That which we commonly call civilization is not an adjunct or an acquirement of man; it is neither a creed nor a polity, neither science, nor philosophy, nor industry; it is rather the measure of progressional force implanted in man."

"The , the s, the , the , and the have met or succeeded one another upon British soil; and the occupation of the country by each has left ineffaceable records of itself in the tongue we use to-day. But English was to the original speech of the island. In the modern form in which we know it, it can, indeed, hardly lay claim to a higher age than five hundred years."

"Professor Lounsbury's name, I suppose, is most closely associated by the public with his studies in Chaucer and Shakespeare. His literary taste, however, was singularly catholic. Pope and Dryden, for example, appealed to him strongly because of their pugnacity and the keenness of their satire. Their poems he knew intimately, and he often quoted passages from them in conversation, not always accurately but rather by way of a paraphrase which gave new edge to an epigram. Of later poets the ones he read most were Byron, Browning, and Tennyson. From any one of the three, he would repeat, when in the mood for it, long stretches running to hundreds of verses."

"It was in the that the forces which give stability and credit to a language began first to operate powerfully upon the speech employed by the great body of the people. It was in the latter half of that century that , in the strict sense of the word literature, properly begins. Numerous works had, indeed, been written between the and this period; but, with the exception of some few specimens of lyric poetry, there had been nothing produces, which, looked at from a purely literary point of view, had any reason to show for its existence. If known to the cultivated classes at all, it was probably treated with contempt; for it was certainly contemptible in execution, whatever it may have been in design. The men who, during those centuries, wrote in English, seem to have done so in most cases because they had not the knowledge or the ability to write in Latin or in French. To a very large extent, their works were translations."

"The pronouncing dictionary has not only come, but is treated with a deference to which, at the outset, it was an utter stranger. It seems as if its production must have been due in the first instance to the desire for a work of such a nature manifested by the imperfectly educated middle class, rising more and more into social prominence. The members of this body wanted somebody to tell them precisely what to say and how to say it. They did not care to exercise the right of private judgment, or, rather, they did not have sufficient faith in their own cultivation to trust it. Authority was what they were after; and when men are longing for authority on any subject, some one will be considerate enough of their welfare, and confident enough in his own sufficiency, to come forward and furnish it."

"It was the attacks connected with the controversy about the "Naval History" that more than anything else embittered ’s feelings. He had striven hard to write a full and trustworthy account of the achievements of his country upon the sea. Because he had refused to pervert what he deemed the truth to the gratification of private spite, he had been assailed with a malignity that had hardly stopped short of any species of misrepresentation. Rarely has devotion to the right met with a worse return. The reward of untiring industry, of patriotic zeal, and of conscientious examination of evidence, was little else than calumny and abuse. He felt so keenly the treatment he had received that he regretted having ever written the "Naval History" at all."

"By Shakespeare Voltaire was both attracted and repelled. As a Frenchman, trained in the strictest rules of the s, and disposed to render those rules even more rigid, he was shocked beyond measure by the irregularities, the gross improprieties, or rather indecencies, as he looked upon them, in which the greatest English dramatist had indulged with no apparent consciousness that his course was anything but perfectly proper. A man who could in all sincerity assert, as did Voltaire, that in the , all other laws, that is to say, all other beauties of the drama, are comprised, was not likely to be impressed favorably by the persistent disregard of them which Shakespeare had manifested. He shuddered furthermore at the mixture of the comic and the tragic in the same production; at the low characters which were brought upon the stage, and the low language in which they indulged; at the scenes of violence, of horror, and of carnage which were enacted in full view of the audience. Such practices ran counter to all his personal tastes and prejudices, as well as to the traditions of which he believed, or tried to believe, surpassed not only that of all modern nations, but themselves."

"When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; any passer-by can bean you with a ball."

"All flowers are flirtatious—particularly if they carry hyphenated names. The more hyphens in the name, the flirtier the flower."

"Thank God for reflex decisions; they are the sine qua non of serenity. Suppose you had to decide afresh each day whether or not to brush your teeth?"

"Open to all parties, but influenced by none."

"His reputation in future time will rest, as a patriot, on the manly independence which gave through the initiatory stage and progress of the Revolution the strong influence of the press he directed toward the cause of freedom, when royal flattery would have seduced and the power of government subdued its action."

"Now the dark waters at the bow fold back, like earth against the plow; foam brightens like the dogwood now at home, in my own country."

"It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment."

"Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery."

"Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities and virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures."

"The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them."

"The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul. The soul must work its way out of prison, and, in doing so, provide itself with wings for a future journey. It is for each of us to determine whether our wings shall be those of an angel or a grub!"

"The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood."

"There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it."