War & Peace Quote by Samuel E. Morison

Morison needles a comforting myth: that the historian is a neutral spectator, serenely filing facts while the real actors sweat under pressure. His line insists that the historian, too, is drafted by circumstance. Time and space are not just the raw material of history; they are the constraints that shape the writing of it. The difference is tempo, not category. Statesmen and soldiers decide fast because bodies and borders are on the line. Historians decide slower, but they still decide: what counts as a turning point, whose voice is credible, which causes deserve the dignity of explanation.

The subtext is a rebuke to antiquarianism and to the fantasy of total objectivity. Morison is saying that “waiting for all the evidence” is itself a choice, often an evasive one. Archives expand, interpretations shift, political needs change; the historian’s present moment presses on the past like a thumb on film. Even the neatest narrative is a map drawn to get someone somewhere, not a photocopy of reality.

Context matters. Morison wrote in a 20th century America that watched world wars, the rise of professional social science, and intense fights over national story. As a naval historian with a taste for narrative drive, he’s defending history as a decision-making craft, closer to command than to clerking. The ethical sting is clear: if historians cannot avoid judgment, they owe readers an honest account of their criteria, pressures, and blind spots.