John Steinbeck Quotes

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

As historians, we refuse to allow ourselves these vain speculations which turn on possibilities that, in order to be reduced to actuality, suppose an overturning of the Universe, in which our globe, like a speck of abandoned matter, escapes our vision and is no longer an object worthy of our regard. In order to fix our vision, it is necessary to take it such as it is, to observe well all parts of it, and by indications infer from the present to the past.

Confronted by an unknowable, historians demand evidence, witnesses, corroboration.

History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.

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

History is a tangled skein that one may take up at any point, and break when one has unravelled enough.

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

A few hints as to the craft may be useful to budding historians. First and foremost, get writing!

I am a lay historian by nature. I seek out an empirical reflection of what truth is. I sort of want dates and motivations and I want the whole story. But I've always felt, unconsciously, that all human history is that connection from person to person to person, event to event to event, and from idea to idea.

I decided that what I really wanted to do was to make my writing in history deeper, if that's the right word to use. And that is what I did.

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

The story and study of the past, both recent and distant, will not reveal the future, but it flashes beacon lights along the way and it is a useful nostrum against despair.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.

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

Historians are not good at hypothetical questions.

As a historian, you can only go as far as the evidence will take you.

The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it.

Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

I don't think history will ever be a science because history will never be reduced to law-like behavior. People are to unpredictable.

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

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

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.