Marc Bloch Quotes

#1. The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.

Marc Bloch

#2. But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

Marc Bloch

#3. The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

Marc Bloch

#4. Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge.

Marc Bloch

#5. The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men.

Marc Bloch

#6. The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings.

Marc Bloch

#7. The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand.

Marc Bloch

#8. History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical.

Marc Bloch