Samuel Eliot Morison Quotes

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in History, Uncategorized

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Judgement, Values, Acting

• 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.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Honesty

  Tags in Balance

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Honesty

  Tags in Quality

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Experience

• 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.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Almost

• 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.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Enthusiasm

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Space, Force

• 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.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Evolution

  Tags in Right

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Worth

• 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 Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Wishes

• I have nothing revolutionary or even novel to offer.

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Offer

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

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Historical

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

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Agree

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

  Samuel Eliot Morison

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Historian

Samuel Eliot Morison (15)

Birth:	9th July, 1887
Death:	15th May, 1976
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Historian

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