David Friedrich Strauss Quotes

The reason people turn to supernatural explanations is that the mind abhors a vacuum of explanation. Because we do not yet have a fully natural explanation for mind and consciousness, people turn to supernatural explanations to fill the void.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.

All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.

The study of History is the best medicine for a sick mind.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

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

Learning history is easy; learning its lessons seems almost impossibly difficult.

History can tell us what happened in the past. But it cannot assert that it must happen again in the future.

It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture; the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the "higher criticism," the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

I entirely agree that a historian ought to be precise in detail; but unless you take all the characters and circumstances into account, you are reckoning without the facts. The proportions and relations of things are just as much facts as the things themselves.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events.

I came into history from a primary concern with mathematics and science. This has been a tremendous help to me as a person and as a historian, although it must be admitted it has served to make my historical interpretations less conventional than may be acceptable of many of my colleagues in the field.

My basic notion regarding the matter of historical recognition is basically, it's a matter that should be left to the good hands of historians and experts.

Historical explanation is not identical with moral judgment.

History is basically really looking back and finding out what happened to an individual, a community, a family, a group in a certain event. And so that's why I go, "Wow. That's what acting really is. You find out the background, you get the joy of creating a fictional history of a fictional character and you get to tell a story." So I felt that acting is making history come alive and it became my mode of trying to figure out what this craft of acting is really all about.

Historical investigation has for its aim to fix the order and character of events throughout past time and in all places. The task is frankly superhuman.

Nothing is easier than to teach historical method, but, when learned, it has little use.

Nothing, indeed, but the possession of some power can with any certainty discover what at the bottom is the true character of any man.

Historical fiction is not history. You're blending real events and actual historical personages with characters of your own creation.

A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.

Writing history is like drinking an ocean and pissing a cupful.

It is only the superficial qualities that last. Man's deeper nature is soon found out.

We must learn, and we are gradually learning, how to write history with the help of archaeology.