G. M. Trevelyan Quotes

I don’t like trying to predict the future. I am a historian. I have enough trouble predicting the past.

Historians emphasize contingency, complexity, and the unanticipated ... Few principles apply all the time.

We can be almost certain of being wrong about the future, if we are wrong about the past.

"History repeats itself" and "History never repeats itself" are about equally true ... We never know enough about the infinitely complex circumstances of any past event to prophesy the future by analogy.

Nobody can see into the future. Nobody knows what going to go on.

We should keep in mind that it is easy to concoct stories explaining the past or to become confident about dubious scenarios of the future. We should view both explanations and prophecies with skepticism.

People don't realize that we cannot forecast the future. What we can do is have probabilities of what causes what, but that's as far as we go. And I've had a very successful career as a forecaster, starting in 1948 forward. The number of mistakes I have made are just awesome. There is no number large enough to account for that.

History shows us that people are terrible about guessing what is going to happen - next week, next month, and especially next year.

History is more interesting than politics.

History keeps teaching us that we can't recognize the important events that are going to trigger changes.

We will never have 100 percent certainty except in hindsight.

History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.

Predicting the future is very difficult. As a historian I have trouble trying to predict the past.

What happens today can affect what happens tomorrow, but it cannot affect what happened yesterday.

There’s a big difference between history and the future.

History is totally unpredictable.

Predictions are so often, so wrong ... The future is just too complicated.

It’s very hard to predict the weather. Predicting human affairs is very difficult.

Events are as much the parents of the future as they were the children of the past.

There are two kinds of economists in the world. Those who don't know the future and those who don't know that they don't know the future.

History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

Historians are prophets of the past, not of the future.

There is no formula that will guarantee success in forecasting, no magic words that will part the clouds. The real problem, as the old saw puts it, is that the future lies ahead.

History is about great forces, yes, but also about contingency.

The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.