#historian

The apparent pointlessness of fashion may be just what makes it so strong as a zeitgeist sensor. Even I, a designer, do not know why a certain proportion feels dated or why another one feels exciting at a given moment. I leave that to the cultural historians and theorists. ↗

— Jil Sander

#apparent #certain #cultural #dated #designer

The historian is a prophet looking backward. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#historian #looking #prophet

I didn't realize the president was such an historian. ↗

— Mark Shields

#i #president #realize #such

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history. ↗

— Oliver Stone

#does #dramatic #dramatist #historian #history

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed. ↗

— Oliver Stone

#discrete #facts #historian #historians #into

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me. ↗

— Robertson Davies

#fifth-business #historians #infantry #orders #survival

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. ↗

— Eric Hobsbawm

#contradictions #historians #justifies #makes #nation

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period. ↗

— Howard Hodgkin

#historian #historical #i #overview #period

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. ↗

— Albion W. Small

#become #facts #finding #forgotten #historians

Everyone knows history is written by the winners, but that cliche misses a crucial detail: Over time, the winners are always the progressives. Conservatism can only win in the short term, because society cannot stop evolving (and social evolution inevitably dovetails with the agenda of those who see change as an abstract positive). It might take seventy years, but it always happens eventually. Serious historians are, almost without exception, self-styled progressives. Radical views--even the awful ones--improve with age. ↗

— Chuck Klosterman

#conservatives #evolution #historians #history #progressive