Deborah Harkness Quotes

Confronted by an unknowable, historians demand evidence, witnesses, corroboration.

History must speak for itself. A historian is content if he has been able to shed more light.

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.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened.

In history, one gathers clues like a detective, tries to present an honest account of what most likely happened, and writes a narrative according to what we know and, where we aren't absolutely sure, what might be most likely to have happened, within the generally accepted rules of evidence and sources.

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

We need to read history from the source.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

I am a lay historian by nature. I seek out an empirical reflection of what truth is. I sort of want dates and motivations and I want the whole story. But I've always felt, unconsciously, that all human history is that connection from person to person to person, event to event to event, and from idea to idea.

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually [essentially?] happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).

The study of history, while it does not endow with prophecy, may indicate lines of probability.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

It must be recognized that the real truths of history are hard to discover. Happily, for the most part, they are rather matters of curiosity than of real importance.

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

I am a historian. I do a lot of research, and I try to get it right.

The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro.