Walter Raleigh Quotes

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.

It must be recognized that the real truths of history are hard to discover. Happily, for the most part, they are rather matters of curiosity than of real importance.

Nobody knows what really happened in any historical period. There are some periods where we know more than others, though.

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.

All history, so far as it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance.

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.

Official history is a matter of believing murderers on their own word.

Even if people tell me they have historical proof [that it is not historical], that doesn't really bother me.

[Read] anything but history,.. for history must be false.

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

Biblical archaeology was developed early in this century in an effort to substantiate the authenticity of the Biblical account. It's by now generally recognized in Biblical scholarship that it has done the opposite. The Bible is not a historical text, and has only vague resemblances to what took place, as far as can be reconstructed. For example, whether Israel ever existed is not clear; if so, it was probably a small kingdom somewhere in the hills, apparently virtually unknown to the Egyptians.

People can burn archives; people can destroy evidence, but to say that history is perishable, that historical evidence is perishable, is different than saying that history is subjective.

If the authors and custodians of history turn out to have an attractive image, it is only reasonable to look beyond and ask whether the image they construct is accurate.

All the ancient histories, as one of our wits say, are just fables that have been agreed upon

I have a multivolume history of the world from the 19th century that begins with Noah's flood as though it's as historical a fact as the rise and fall of Rome.

There is more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than there is that Julius Caesar ever lived or that Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three.

With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

If you think about how broadcast mini-series approach historical events, there is a hagiography. There has been a soft, very glossy idea about history. And one of the things I like about Game of Thrones, for example, is just the grit and the authenticity.

She is an excellent creature, but she can never remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans.

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

Those of us who write and study history are accustomed to its approximations and ambiguities. This is why we do not take literally the tenth-hand reports of frightened and illiterate peasants who claim to have seen miracles or to have had encounters with messiahs and prophets and redeemers who were, like them, mere humans. And this is also why we will never submit to dictation from those who display a fanatical belief in certainty and revelation.

What of the Exodus? That too, is a wonderful story, but from the viewpoint of an historian, it is - to use a word scholars love - problematic. Let's say there are doubts, to say the least, among many scholars, as to whether the Exodus actually occurred. That's a historical issue.

Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world.

Look, if you have a problem with distilling the Battle of Thermopylae down to freedom versus tyranny, you need to read Herodotus because he's the one. It's his fault, not modern culture's fault. He did it.' [Victor Davis Hanson] references a lot of things like that because he feels like the spirit of the book and of the movie ["300"] are very close to the Spartan aesthetic. That's really kind of what he feels."