#historians

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

There was a great historian lost in Wolverstone. He had the right imagination that knows just how far it is safe to stray from the truth and just how far to colour it so as to change its shape for his own purposes. ↗

— Rafael Sabatini

#change

Historians don't really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low. ↗

— Aldrich Ames

#carry #certainly #could #debates #europe

The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men. ↗

— John Aubrey

#historians #lord #men #oxford #patron

I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject. ↗

— Ibrahim Babangida

#believe #events #facts #historians #historical

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write. ↗

— Alexander Downer

#historians #knows #well #will #write

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#conception #dead #experience #experiences #gain

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story. ↗

— Donald Kagan

#explaining #had #historians #history #own

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians. ↗

— Horace Walpole

#circumstances #exalt #historians #how #improve

I hope that not only my documentaries, but everybody's documentaries, last. It will really confuse historians in the next century, because they'll have, in addition to all the print material, they'll have all these pictures to look at. ↗

— Frederick Wiseman

#because #century #confuse #documentaries #everybody