Famous quotes by Historians

"Lincoln had no such person that he could talk with. Often, as a result, he debated with himself, and he would draw up a kind of list of the pros and cons of an argument, and carefully figure them out, and he might test them in public"

David Herbert Donald, Historian

"In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs"

David Herbert Donald, Historian

"I think, with the gay liberation movement has had need for heroes and heroines, and it would be rather nice to have Abraham Lincoln as your poster boy, wouldn't it?"

David Herbert Donald, Historian

"And finally, Lincoln was not a good impromptu speaker; he was at his best when he could read from a carefully prepared manuscript. Though maybe a teleprompter could have helped that!"

David Herbert Donald, Historian

"What I thought we ought to try to do in a book like this is to focus closely on Lincoln himself, to see what he knew, how he knew it, how he came to make the decisions that he did, and how he implemented them"

David Herbert Donald, Historian

"If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself"

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Historian

"Law is stable; the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge; and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The members of such a society consider that the transgression of a religious ordinance should be punished by civil penalties, and that the violation of a civil duty exposes the delinquent to divine correction"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office"

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Historian

"The most superficial student of Roman history must be struck by the extraordinary degree in which the fortunes of the republic were affected by the presence of foreigners, under different names, on her soil"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The ancient Roman code belongs to a class of which almost every civilised nation in the world can show a sample, and which, so far as the Roman and Hellenic worlds were concerned, were largely diffused over them at epochs not widely distant from one another"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a citizen of Western Europe to bring thoroughly home to himself the truth that the civilisation which surrounds him is a rare exception in the history of the world"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The epoch of Customary Law, and of its custody by a privileged order, is a very remarkable one"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"Our authorities leave us no doubt that the trust lodged with the oligarchy was sometimes abused, but it certainly ought not to be regarded as a mere usurpation or engine of tyranny"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The Roman jurisprudence has the longest known history of any set of human institutions"

Henry James Sumner Maine, Historian

"The individual always realizes only one of the possibilities in its development, which could always have taken a different turning whenever it has to make an important decision"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"Ancient metaphysics underwent many changes at the hands of medieval thinkers who brought it in line with the dominant religious and theological movements of their day"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"The sciences which take socio-historical reality as their subject matter are seeking, more intensively than ever before, their systematic relations to one another and to their foundation"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"To attempt this would be like seeing without eyes or directing the gaze of knowledge behind one's own eye. Modern science can acknowledge no other than this epistemological stand-point"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"The lived experiences which could not find adequate scientific expression in the substance doctrine of rational psychology were now validated in light of new and better methods"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"From the perspective of mere representation, the external world always remains only a phenomenon"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"Thus there arose in me both a need and a plan for the foundation of the human sciences"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"On the other hand, for the whole human being who wills, feels, and represents, external reality is given simultaneously and with as much certitude as his own self"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"The existence of inherent limits of experience, in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

"Any theory intended to describe and analyze socio-historical reality cannot restrict itself to the human spirit and disregard the totality of human nature"

Wilhelm Dilthey, Historian

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