Raoul Berger Quotes

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.

History consists of facts attested to by evidence.

The historian’s imperative has no teeth.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

The first duty of an historian is to be on his guard against his own sympathies; but he cannot wholly escape their influence.

History is an accumulative science, gradually gathering truth through the steady and plodding efforts of countless practitioners turning out countless monographs

So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.

I conduct very few interviews with veterans. The contemporaneous, or near-contemporaneous, record for WWII is so spectacularly deep that latter-day recollections are largely unnecessary for a historian. Of course, in considering any account, I'm looking for additional sources that can confirm or enlarge that version of events.

The only thing that interests me is history - reviewing the past and making something out of it.

The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.

The historian has a special obligation to sobriety and fidelity to the record.

Whenever one assumes the role of historian, friendship and enmities have to be forgotten. Often one has to bestow on adversaries the highest praise…. I hope to satisfy … by appealing to the evidence of actual events and of eyewitnesses.

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

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

Memory is often less about truth than about what we want it to be.

Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred

History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.

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

Historians usually record events based on the time and date of when they occurred.

Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future.

I love the past. I read about the past all the time.

With my research, I really need absolute confirmation of what actually happened, direct physical connections to the past.