Scholarly Approach Quotes

As a Canadian, I've always approached international history as an outsider, neither attacking nor defending key decisions - those were made by actors who are also major figures within national historical traditions for American and British scholars.

The great minds, the great works transcend all limitations of time, of language, and of race, and the scholar can never feel initiated into the company of the elect until he can approach all of life's problems from the cosmopolitan standpoint.

The writer of history is perhaps closer to the artist than the scholar.

The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic.

John Lott documents how far 'politically correct' vested interests are willing to go to denigrate anyone who dares disagree with them. Lott has done us all a service by his thorough, thoughtful scholarly approach to a highly controversial issue.

Of course, all students should learn African history, as they should learn the history of other continents and major civilizations. But this history should be taught accurately and based on the best scholarship, not ideology or politics.

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or "scholarship candidates," but "Fellows of another college."

Carl Becker has defined a professor as a man who thinks otherwise; a scholar is a man who otherwise thinks.

I always use primary sources, in addition to reading biographies and other materials.