Historian Quotes

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.
H. L. Mencken

I'm a historian, and that freaks me out.
Mike Tyson

Historian - a broad-gauge gossip.
Ambrose Bierce

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

Men, Experience, Through

I'm a historian in my own mind.
Quentin Tarantino

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.
Stendhal

Ability, Invent

The historian is a prophet looking backward.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Looking, Prophet, Backward

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.
Robert Plant

Through, Find, Pretty

I feel like I've always been a full-time historian, but nobody knows it.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
Herodotus

Time, Happen, Few

All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small.
Henry Louis Gates

Small, Often, Number

To a historian libraries are food, shelter, and even muse.
Barbara Tuchman

Food, Muse, Libraries

The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his due.
Buffalo Bill

Life, Time, Greatest

Every historian discloses a new horizon.
George Sand

Horizon, Discloses

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.
Stephen Ambrose

Education, Nothing, Through

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

Nothing, Facts, Discern

What would be the nicest thing I could say about Newt Gingrich? He may be one of the great supporters of the humanities, because you have people who don't want to study the social sciences, because it's not profitable, and now Newt, as the highest-paid historian in American history, may be an encouragement to people to study history.
Barney Frank

Great, History, May

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence.
Richard Russo

Tired, Thought, Why

But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt, and this is where I fault Stephen Ambrose and a lot of these guys who attack me - not all of life is a result of conspiracy by any means! Accident occurs alongside conspiracy.
Oliver Stone

Life, Means, Worth

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

History, Trying, Dramatic

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

Book, Tell, Order

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.
Ken Burns

Time, Through, Subject

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.
E. L. Doctorow

Tell, Felt, Happened

Maya Angelou, the famous African American poet, historian, and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature, believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.
Michael N. Castle

Great, Famous, Struggle

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

Work, Art, Period

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.
James Anthony Froude

Against, Duty, Guard

I tried, after I wrote 'Twilight,' to read 'The Historian,' because it was the big thing that summer. But I can't read other people's vampires. If it's too close, I get upset; if it's too far away, I get upset. It just makes me very neurotic.
Stephenie Meyer

After, Big, Away

I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past.
Penelope Lively

Past, Whether, Interested

I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.
Penelope Lively

Life, Change, Through

Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.
Christo

Art, Book, Meaning

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Dante Alighieri

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