Historical Sources Quotes

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

Oh do not read history, for that I know must be false.

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

I write to learn the flow of history.

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

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

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

Writing history takes a great deal of imagination. I don’t mean making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself to another time.

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

Whereas much of what we know from ancient history is derived from one or two sources, we have no fewer than nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, corroborating the disciples' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Jesus. That's an avalanche of data.

I tend to think history is more a branch of literature than science.

I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.

To write history is so difficult that most historians are forced to make concessions to the technique of legende.

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals

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

There is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.

No, this customary aim of research by excavators is completely foreign to the historical work with which I am occupied... my sole and only aim is to be able to establish a historical fact, on which I disagree with some eminent historians and geographers.

As an undergraduate, I had not studied literature - I was a history major.

Whole swaths of the book [Lincoln in the Bardo] are made up of verbatim quotes from various historical sources, which I cut up and rearranged to form part of the narrative.

Leave history to historians.

I think you can learn a lot from primary sources. 'The Penguin Book of Witches,' which is edited by novelist Katherine Howe, is a wonderful compilation of primary sources about witchcraft.

The ‘facts' of history do not exist for any historian until he creates them, and into every fact that he creates some part of his individual experience must enter. But experience not only furnishes the elements for the image which the sources guide us in forming: it is also the final court of appeal in evaluating the sources themselves.

I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.

Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.