Historical Processes Quotes

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

I think that historical processes have meaning and that we have to accept this - or else face utter despair.

The processes of history in themselves … pose an interesting question- among so many others, that of their status. The status of a process may be affirmative, negative or interrogative. But the status of historical discourse is uniformly assertive, affirmative. The historical fact is linguistically associated with a privileged ontological status: we recount what has been, not what has not been, or what has been uncertain … historical discourse is not acquainted with negation.

All societies are historical.

The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is 'knowing thyself'as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.

Nothing is inevitable in history.

There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

The political and social processes by which the Western European societies were put in order are not very apparent, have been forgotten, or have become habitual. They are part of our most familiar landscape, and we don't perceive them anymore. But most of them once scandalized people.