James Henry Breasted Quotes

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

Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

It is the recognition of history as a record of human experience which has inevitably resulted in the inclusion of this conquest of civilization within the framework of a complete human history.

Even historians with knowledge of the event, and with the materials before them on which to form a judgment, see but little way into the causes and consequences of the great events in human history.

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

History is the science of what never happens twice.

We know only a single science, the science of history. History can be contemplated from two sides, it can be divided into the history of nature and the history of mankind. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.

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

History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.

Who owns history? Everyone and no one--which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes.

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth as a whole.

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veilhangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating.

I used my history degree about twice a year whether I needed to or not.

Nothing has ever looked like that ever in all of human history.

History is an indispensable even though not the highest form of intellectual endeavor.

History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

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

All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.

Construed as a means instead of an end, history is the weapon with which we defend the future against the past.

History is the shank of the social sciences.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history.

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