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"Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history."
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"Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It's a crime."Fuka-Eri thought about that for a moment.Tengo went on, "Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us - is rewritten - we lose the ability to sustain our true selves."

"Many if not most slaves would have each readily jumped, and many if not most slaves would each readily jump, at the opportunity to be a master, if such an opportunity presents or had presented itself."

"Most of Jesus' life is told through the four Gospels of the New Testament, known as the Canonical gospels, written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are not biographies in the modern sense but accounts with allegorical intent. They are written to engender faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the incarnation of God, and not to provide factual data about Jesus's life. This left the door of exaggeration open. And through that door all kinds of mystical non-sense crept in and made place right alongside the good philosophical teachings of Jesus."

"It must be the full confession by Christendom of Christendom's specific contribution to the sum of human cruelty and treachery."

"You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know."

"There probably was a time when the idea of having a toilet inside a house was repulsive."

"The last time everyone loved or at least liked everyone was when the world had a population of about 4."
Explore more quotes by Samuel E. Morison

"Throughout this evolution from left to right, Beard always detested war. Hence his writings were slanted to show that the military side of history was insignificant or a mere reflection of economic forces."

"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."

"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."

"Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get."

"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."

"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."

"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."
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