Michael A. Bellesiles Quotes

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them

History does not repeat itself. Historians repeat each other.

Modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.

History courses made up of all facts and no interpretation are guaranteed to put kids to sleep…. History comes alive when viewed as a patterned story open to ongoing debate.

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

History is a battleground... but it has always been the case. Remembering is a radical act. Choosing what is important and what belongs in the overstuffed metaphorical dustbin of history is of vital importance.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

Even historians with knowledge of the event, and with the materials before them on which to form a judgment, see but little way into the causes and consequences of the great events in human history.

Historians are not good at hypothetical questions.

Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

I write to learn the flow of history.

At BYU, I discovered history, then historiography. I became fascinated with the study of historians and historical trends, with the idea that the way we remember the past changes and shifts with our own preoccupations.