Samuel E. Morison Quotes

American - Historian | July 9, 1887 - May 15, 1976

Historical methodology, as I see it, is a product of common sense applied to circumstances.

Samuel E. Morison

Common SenseCircumstancesSeeI See

If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.

Samuel E. Morison

WifeWishesBeyondAlwaysHopesHe

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.

Samuel E. Morison

HistoryChildRealityTrueMust

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.

Samuel E. Morison

TimeMyselfWritingColleaguesWorth

Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.

Samuel E. Morison

Be TrueProfessionalTrueStandards

Everyone agrees to that; but when we come to define truth, dissension starts.

Samuel E. Morison

TruthEveryoneDefineComeStarts

I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer.

Samuel E. Morison

NothingRevolutionaryOfferEven

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.

Samuel E. Morison

AloneHistoryGoldDesignActing

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.

Samuel E. Morison

HonestyQualityFreeIntellectual

Skepticism is an important historical tool. It is the starting point of all revision of hitherto accepted history.

Samuel E. Morison

HistoryImportantStartingHistorical

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.

Samuel E. Morison

HistoryMyselfExperienceGardenOut

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.

Samuel E. Morison

TimeSpaceMindDecisionsUrgency

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