John Lancaster Spalding Quotes

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

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

Perspective gives us the ability to accurately contrast the large with the small, and the important with the less important. Without it we are lost in a world where all ideas, news, and information look the same. We cannot differentiate, we cannot prioritize, and we cannot make good choices.

I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.

Half of my library are old books because I like seeing how people thought about their world at their time. So that I don't get bigheaded about something we just discovered and I can be humble about where we might go next. Because you can see who got stuff right and most of the people who got stuff wrong.

Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

I was always an outsider, always standing outside, observing and trying to figure things out. Which is exactly what you need to do as a writer, I suppose.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

O, would some Power give us, To see ourselves as others see us!

Those old enough to write their memoirs should not comment on contemporary issues.

I don't think you learn specific lessons from history, but you do learn proportion.

To judge … any man … simply from his own point of view, is weak and illogical. History judges the man from its point of view. It condemns or applauds the point of view itself. The point of view of a malefactor is not to excuse robbery and murder. Nor is the spirit of the age to be pleaded in favor of the evil-doer.

I have labored carefully, not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand human actions

One must be careful not to prejudge the past.

History will show you not all the answers, but it’ll tell you a lot of the questions to ask.

Science fiction, in its purest form, for me, it works the best when it's being used as metaphor to look at something from a one-step-removed process, to give a little objectivity and insight into something that, if you were applying it on the face of it, we'd all be too close to.

Put your choices in perspective.

We cannot do justice to the deeds of former times if we do not in some degree remove ourselves from the circumstances in which we stand and substitute those by which the real actors were surrounded.

The beauty of cricket is that there are so many different opinions as to the best way to do something and at times it is easier to see something when you're not emotionally involved in the game and not responsible for the decision. You can go and have a cup of tea and look at it from a different point of view.

Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.

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

We should read history as little critically as we consider the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create than by its groundwork and composition.

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

Worldly Wisdom Do not stay in the field! Nor climb out of sight. The best view of the world Is from a medium height.

To view current events as a historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy