Son of What is History

The past has always been the handmaid of authority.
- J.H. Plumb

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.
- Edward Gibbon

[History is] little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.
- Edward Gibbon

The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian's own
mind.
- R. G. Collingwood

Nothing capable of being memorized is history.
- R. G. Collingwood

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
- George Santayana

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
- L. P. Hartley

There is no history, only histories.
- Karl Popper

Pour faire de l'histoire, il faut savoir compter.
- Georges Lefebvre

History to be above evasion must stand on documents not on opinion.
- Lord Acton

History is the great propagator of doubt.
- A.J.P. Taylor

To enable man to understand the society of the past and to increase his mastery over the society of the present is the dual function of history.
- E.H. Carr

History thrives on generalizations.
- E.H. Carr

The study of history is the study of causes.
- E.H. Carr

What is History?

While teaching Historiography and Ancient History (as well as English Language and Literature) in secondary and teriary institutions, I have collected a large number of quotations relating to the central question of Historiography, "What is History?". They represent a very wide range of views on what the answer to that question might be. I will post some of them here, beginning with this Baker's Dozen, and continue posting more every week or so at my main blog, Domus Carataci.

"The past is a place of fantasy."
-Hayden White

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics, in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such, and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future; the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit."
- Tom Robbins

Historians and economists (subsidized by governments) are very good at creating and perpetuating myths that justify increasing the power placed in the hands of government.
- Reuven Brenner

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.
- David Ben Gurion

History may be divided into three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears not to move at all.
- Fernand Braudel (1902-1985)

The historian has before him a jigsaw puzzle from which many pieces have disappeared. These gaps can be filled only by his imagination.
- Gaetano Salvemini, Historian and Scientist

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there.
- George Santayana

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
- Bill Vaughan

Some write a narrative of wars and feats,
Of heroes little known, and call the rant
A history.
- William Cowper, The Task, The Garden

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles, bills, and proclamations.
- John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor

I am well aware that I have not written anything but fictions… which is not to say they have nothing to do with the truth.
- Michel Foucault

Since God himself cannot change the past, He is obliged to tolerate the existence of historians.
- Samuel Butler