Robert Vaughan Quotes

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

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

Without philosophy, history is always for me dead and dumb.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.

I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.

Literature is less involved in giving you answers and more dedicated to giving you insight.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.

People have to find ways of explaining the work.

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

Testimony gives something to be interpreted.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater distance from which it looks back.

It is possible to interpret without observing, but not to observe without interpreting.

For me context is the key - from that comes the understanding of everything.

I don't think you really can send an exact message, because any two viewers are so disparate, in terms of their backgrounds, their point of view, their histories, that there's no telling what that message might be.

There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.

I think it's important for people to always understand what is the context is in what is being said, because that obviously determines what folks are talking about.

History is complex.

The power of a thing or an act is in the meaning and the understanding.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

It doesn't seem Shakespeare works if you turn him into a religion.

I do wish that reviews were less like book reports. There was an era when reviewers had something to say about a book: when they painted context and drew conclusions. Many reviews these days are little more than plot summary.

What, if not Shakespeare, is open for interpretation?

I think what we should do as historians is understand. And we can have our own views about how things turned out, but I think, in making judgements, we're getting into tricky territory.