Historical Methodology Quotes

Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.

Confronted by an unknowable, historians demand evidence, witnesses, corroboration.

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

This system demands that the historian shall describe without indignation the most brutal atrocities, speak without love about the highest virtues and with his glacial eye see in social life only the manifestation of irresistible laws due to which every phenomenon occurs exactly as it inevitably had to occur

The only protection as a historian is to institute a process of research and writing that minimizes the possibility of error. And that I have tried to do, aided by modern technology, which enables me, having long since moved beyond longhand, to use a computer for both organizing and taking notes.

The historian must walk a fine line between scientific detachment and humanistic engagement.

The public, as opposed to the profession, has little interest. Historiography—the study of history and its processes—is dull stuff.

I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis.

History is the science of what never happens twice.

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

History is as much an art as a science.

History is the shank of the social sciences.

The Arabian genealogist, like his brother the Arabian historian, had a horror vacui and his fancy had no difficulty in bridging gaps and filling vacancies

A few hints as to the craft may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing!

Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research. And when you see that you've got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. And once you see how they got theirs straight, then you know how you can get yours straight.

We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

We're uncomfortable about considering history as a science. It's classified as a social science, which is considered not quite scientific.

The quarrel of the sociologists with the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding.

Even the most meticulous historians work subjectively. The historian's point of view, his or her selection of subject and sources, the emphasis, the tone - all of these lead to subjective history, inevitably so. I do not say this as a criticism, merely as an observation.

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.

I don't think history will ever be a science because history will never be reduced to law-like behavior. People are to unpredictable.

Almost everyone... seems to be quite sure that the differences between the methodologies of history and of the natural sciences are vast. For, we are assured, it is well known that in the natural sciences we start from observation and proceed by induction to theory. And is it not obvious that in history we proceed very differently? Yes, I agree that we proceed very differently. But we do so in the natural sciences as well.