Historian Quotes

You've got to understand their reasoning. They think of this historian as one of their pocket-people, whom they feel they can count on. - Steven Smith

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

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

You have to take a look at the 1918 experience and realize if 50 to 100 million people died and those numbers come from a recent study from a group of historians that went country by country to determine that number... Today we that have three times the number in the world those numbers are roughly at 180 to 360 million could die. The bottom line is the way these people die. Our medical care delivery system in the modern world isn't any better prepared than in 1918. - Michael Osterholm

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

Years ago there were historians who 'just sit and know;' that was the expression. - Willa Skinner

Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false. - Barry Unsworth

When the history of the 20th century Congress is written post-World War I to the present Tom DeLay will emerge, in the judgment of any honest historian, as one of the more influential leaders of the century. For him to pull back from the leadership will leave a vacuum. - Mike Franc