History is written not only for posterity but by posterity as well.
The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.
History is an accumulative science, gradually gathering truth through the steady and plodding efforts of countless practitioners turning out countless monographs
Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.
Most biographers are apt to be discouraged by the sheer volume of papers left behind by their subject.
I am not someone who believes I am going to find a historical scoop.
A historian is battling all the time to remember as much as possible.
There can be no history without archives.
But I'm a historian. I wasn't interested in just being a producer, I was interested in doing research and presenting that research to a general public.
Perhaps the most important lesson of the New Social Historians is that history belongs to those about whom or whose documents survive.