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It is always difficult to represent the place that power actually holds in the workings of politics and in the processes of history. Some men seem ready to speak as though power did not exist (because in their view it ought not to exist); and if others are emphatic about the reality of its presence they are assumed to be in favour of force, merely because they recognise its operation in the world.

— Herbert Butterfield Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship (1955)

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More quotes by Herbert Butterfield

The raconteur knows too well that, if he investigates the truth of the matter, he is only too likely to lose his good story.”

The Origins Of History (1981)

About the scientific revolution: it “outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes”.

Every age likes its historians to place events in a framework that corresponds with contemporary prejudices and answers to contemporary political desires.

Man on His Past: The Study of the History of Historical Scholarship (1955)

One of the paradoxes of history has been the way in which the name of England has come to be so closely associated with liberty on the one hand and tradition on the other hand.

Liberty in the Modern World (1952)

Since the 17th century England has had a happier fate than most of the countries of continental Europe. In particular she has been spared the most violent cataclysms and the bitterness of civil war.

The Englishman and His History (1944)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Herbert Butterfield (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.