Henry Adams Quotes

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

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.

The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.

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.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.

History must speak for itself. A historian is content if he has been able to shed more light.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

It is a great pity that every human being does not, at an early stage of his life, have to write a historical work. He would then realize that the human race is in quite a jam about truth.

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

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.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

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.

I think what we should do as historians is understand. And we can have our own views about how things turned out, but I think, in making judgements, we're getting into tricky territory.

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

I love those historians that are either very simple or most excellent. Such as are between both (which is the most common fashion), it is they that spoil all; they will needs chew our meat for us and take upon them a law to judge, and by consequence to square and incline the story according to their fantasy.

All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.