Lee Hazlewood Quotes

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

I'm a historian, and that freaks me out.

History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.

I’m not, like, that smart.

The best historian is he who combines knowledge of the evidence with the largest intellect, the warmest human sympathy and the highest imaginative powers.

My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.

Every historian discloses a new horizon.

You know, I'm really not that bright.

I can fairly be called an amateur because I do what I do, in the original sense of the word - for love, because I love it. On the other hand, I think that those of us who make our living writing history can also be called true professionals.

So history is fertile territory for me and I think I could feel happy with any period of history, provided I had the right sources and the necessary time for the initial research.

I'm not that interesting!

I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

I'm only a stupid filmmaker.

I feel like I've always been a full-time historian, but nobody knows it.

You're taught from a very young age that you shouldn't get too big for your britches, so I tend to err way too much on the side of 'Nothing means anything.'

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them

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

No two historians offer precisely the same reading of an historical event; if we did, far fewer articles and books would be published.

I'm not that cool or anything.

I enjoy the act of research. I'm researching as a means to an end, but I literally just enjoy reading about how people lived in the past and understanding it better.

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

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

The easiest way of change history is to become a historian.