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"So I have cultivated the vast garden of human experience which is history, without troubling myself overmuch about laws, essential first causes, or how it is all coming out."
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Exlpore more Experience quotes
"There is a huge difference between learning about truth and experiencing truth. Touch the source."
"All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it."
"No matter how loud the sirens or how numerous the hazard signs, we all touch the flames at least once to prove they're hot."
"I wear my wrinkles like battle scars, having earned every last one slaying life's dragons. They boast of my victories and some defeats while their beauty is a wealth of wisdom gained."
"Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young."
"Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice."
"Just because a person successfully steers a voyage through hell doesn't mean he ever wants to sail that route again."
"Experience is by industry achiev'd,And perfected by the swift course of time."
"What is the good of drawing conclusions from experience? I don't deny we sometimes draw the right conclusions, but don't we just as often draw the wrong ones?"
"There is more experience on the field of justification than on the camp of training. Sometimes, you got to take actions to learn more."
Explore more quotes by Samuel E. Morison
"Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis."
"Courses on historical methodology are not worth the time that they take up. I shall never give one myself, and I have observed that many of my colleagues who do give such courses refrain from exemplifying their methods by writing anything."
"Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances."
"Yet enthusiasm is no excuse for the historian going off balance. He should remind the reader that outcomes were neither inevitable nor foreordained, but subject to a thousand changes and chances."
"In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not."
"Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history."
"The same contingencies of time and space that force a statesman or soldier to make decisions, impel the historian, though with less urgency, to make up his mind."
"Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses."
"With honesty of purpose, balance, a respect for tradition, courage, and, above all, a philosophy of life, any young person who embraces the historical profession will find it rich in rewards and durable in satisfaction."
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