James H. Sweet Quotes

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

The comfortable thing about the study of history is that it inclines us to think hopefully of our own times.

I thought it necessary to study history, even to study it deeply, in order to obtain a clear meaning of our immediate time.

Those who have employed the study of history, as they ought, for their instruction, for the regulation of their private manners, and the management of public affairs, must agree with me that it is the most pleasant of wisdom

[In studying history:] emotions are as important as objective circumstances and that they are usually inseparable from what can be counted and measured and seen.

In history, as in traveling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

The careful study of the past enlarges our foresight in contemporary affairs and affords to citizens and to monarchs lessons of incitement or warning in the ordering of public policy

Writing history takes a great deal of imagination. I don’t mean making things up, but you have to be able to transport yourself to another time.

One test of a great work of history is does it make you feel like you have lived through the period

People are always using the past for political purposes…. If they do, they should at least do their homework. l

The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.

The ‘facts' of history do not exist for any historian until he creates them, and into every fact that he creates some part of his individual experience must enter. But experience not only furnishes the elements for the image which the sources guide us in forming: it is also the final court of appeal in evaluating the sources themselves.

The public, as opposed to the profession, has little interest. Historiography—the study of history and its processes—is dull stuff.

We often do not get the first draft of history right.

The historian must walk a fine line between scientific detachment and humanistic engagement.

History is not ancestral memory or collective tradition. It is what people learned from priests, schoolmasters, the writers of history books, and the compilers of magazine articles and TV programs.

Random forays into the history of political language with undue regard for the detail of historical context all too often end up as exercises in self confirmation.

The general idea of history seems to be that it is the biography of a society…. History is to the common life of many what biography is to an individual.

History is not only the record of the past, but also the discipline of investigating and interpreting the past. The study of history develops habits of critical thinking and effective writing, as well as cultivates the careful analysis of various types of quantitative and qualitative evidence.

The study of history reveals that human progress has not been continuous and regular, but intermittent and spasmodic, often depending upon apparently accidental causes. It is difficult to get a cross-section view of society at any given stage.