#historian

Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species. ↗

— Konrad Lorenz

#determined #did #evolution #face #fact

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language. ↗

— Paul de Man

#agent #both #degree #his #historian

Historians and archaeologists will one day discover that the ads of our time are the richest and most faithful reflections that any society ever made of its entire range of activities. ↗

— Marshall McLuhan

#ads #any #archaeologists #day #discover

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. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#alone #any #assistants #case #creates

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#countries #does #expect #expected #free

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#believes #every #historian #professional #speaks

The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#decisions #force #his #historian #less

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. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#bad #broad #early #generalization #his

Yet enthusiasm is no excuse for the historian going off balance. He should remind the reader that outcomes were neither inevitable nor foreordained, but subject to a thousand changes and chances. ↗

— Samuel E. Morison

#chances #changes #enthusiasm #excuse #going

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case. ↗

— Howard Nemerov

#discern #facts #historian #make #nothing