Edward Hallett Carr Quotes

#1. History is preoccupied with fundamental processes of change. If you are allergic to these processes, you abandon history and take cover in the social sciences. Today anthropology, sociology, etc, flourish. History is sick. But then our society too is sick

Edward Hallett Carr

#2. If we can widen the range of experiences beyond what we as individuals have encountered, if we can draw upon the experiences of others who've had to confront comparable situations in the past, then - although there are no guarantees - our chances of acting wisely should increase proportionately.

Edward Hallett Carr

#3. Change is certain. Progress is not.

Edward Hallett Carr

#4. Study the historian before you begin to study the facts.

Edward Hallett Carr

#5. Good historians, I suspect, whether they think about it or not, have the future in their bones. Besides the question: Why? the historian also asks the question: Whither?

Edward Hallett Carr

#6. What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization.

Edward Hallett Carr

#7. Immature thought is predominately purposive and utopian. Thought which rejects purpose altogether is the thought of old age. Mature thought combines purpose with observation and analysis.

Edward Hallett Carr

#8. The function off the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present.

Edward Hallett Carr

#9. It is significant that the nationalization of thought has proceded everywhere pari passu with the nationalization of industry.

Edward Hallett Carr

#10. History consists of a corpus ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish in the fishmonger's slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him.

Edward Hallett Carr

#11. The facts speak only when the historian calls on them: it is he who decides to which facts to give the floor, and in what order or context

Edward Hallett Carr