Arthur Erickson Quotes

I have a long view of history - my orientation is archaeological because I'm always thinking in terms of ancient Greece and Rome, ancient Persia and Egypt.

Histories are to educate so that we understand better for ourselves and for motivation.

I read a lot of history for fun.

There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about, but you can't know it all, and that's where imagination can work.

Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Plato, and Cicero, just to name a few, all lived in pagan societies. Some of the greatest political and military leaders of all time, such as Alexander the Great, Pericles of Athens, Hannibal of Carthage, and Julius Caesar of Rome, were all pagans, or else living in a pagan society.

I've always been a relatively big history buff. In college, I took a lot of history courses, and when I was in grad school, I liked to audit them.

Every historian discloses a new horizon.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

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

What really disconcerts commentators, I suspect, is that when they read historical fiction, they feel their own lack of education may be exposed; they panic, because they don't know which bits are true.

I like reading about the past. I'm definitely not a history buff, but I do read a bit of history now and again, and to do that for work is really exciting.

I've been reading a lot of books on history, and watching a lot of educational TV. Wikipedia too, even though it is not reliable.

A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.

On the Italian side, we can trace the family back 2,000 years. I have a cousin in Rome, a famous archaeologist, Count Andrea Carandini, who was in Lombardy and came across some pottery with the original name of the family, Carandinus, painted on it.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

When you tell people you're in history, they give you this pained expression because that was the course they hated in high school. But history can be exciting, intellectually rigorous, and fun.

I think you can learn from history.

I spent most of the '60s, when I was starting to try to write novels, living and working in Greece and Turkey. These are countries where the ancient past is interfused with the daily present, and I remember being struck with wonder at the constant sense of continuity and connection, the reminders that lie in wait for you at every turn.

I like historical things; I like researching things.

I don't have a strong interest in history.

The man who first gave history a recognized place in science was an ancient historian.

Since my high school years, I have been interested in history, especially in Roman history, a topic on which I have read rather extensively. The Latin that goes with this kind of interest proved useful when I had to generate a few terms and names for cell biology.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

Study history. Study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft.

Americans are in vital need of the instruction that historians can provide.