If knowing history made you rich, librarians would be billionaires.
To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.
The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For... things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.
The talent, including the talent for history - and I do think there are people who just have a talent for it, the way you have a talent for public speaking or music or whatever - it shouldn't be allowed to lie dormant. It should be brought alive.
I know a lot about the Titanic. My dad was a Titanic expert.
My basic notion regarding the matter of historical recognition is basically, it's a matter that should be left to the good hands of historians and experts.
I didn't realize the president was such an historian.
McMaster, 54, is the smartest and most capable military officer of his generation, one who has not only led American victories on the battlefields of the 1991 Gulf War and of the Iraq War, but also holds a Ph.D. in history.
Foolish the doctor who despises the knowledge acquired by the ancients.
I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.
Hollywood need not adhere to historians’ methods any more than journalists or tour guides, but bad history yields bad politics. The erasure of slave-trading African empires in the name of political unity is uncomfortably like right-wing conservative attempts to erase slavery from school curricula in the United States, also in the name of unity. These interpretations are two sides of the same coin. If history is only those stories from the past that confirm current political positions, all manner of political hacks can claim historical expertise.
