Historical Criticism Quotes

I do not like the late resurrection of the Jesuits. . . . If ever any congregation of men could merit eternal perdition on earth, and in hell, according to these historians, though, like Pascal, true Catholics, it is this company of Loyolas.

One could grant to science and history everything they seem to teach regarding the age of the world, the origin of man, the impossibility of miracles, the impossibility of the immortality of the soul, and of the resurrection of the body, the Jahvist, the Elohist, the third Isaah, and so on, without abandoning one iota of the substance of the Jewish faith.

I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

One of the reasons for the survival of the ANC (African National Congress) over such a long period, is their ability to steal other people's programs, and to adapt to situations. As extraordinary adaptation to a policy which previously they opposed, and then they realize its merits, and then adjust and it comes out as a different policy. That has been the characteristic of the ANC, for which they've been criticized historically, as being inconsistent. But it's that which enabled them to survive to a ripe old age, and they are still doing it.

The historical profession is nowhere famous for its tolerance, but there are not many countries where historians can expect to pay for their opinions with penal servitude or the firing squad.

So (if) some cracker come and tell you 'Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks.

The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.

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.

We can be revisionist, and that's a good thing to be at times, but we shouldn't airbrush our history, so we can only make judgments in the objective conditions of that time.

Apart from the Punic Wars, I've been blamed for just about everything.

If you want to avoid criticism, then you shouldn't be a historian, because historians are trying to understand and explain. If you're trying to please people, then you should go into the fashion business, or the candy business.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

The habit of regarding the Bible as historically accurate dates only to the Protestant Reformation: That outlook has since passed to the Muslim world.

History requires us to judge the figures of the past not by our moral standards but by those of the ages in which they lived and worked.

I think criticism, or a critical engagement with history, has a good deal to do with a willingness to be fooled.

The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

FDR's job results were, to put it politely, disturbing.

How difficult it is to live when one feels that the judgment of many millenniums is around one and against one.