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The historian and the facts of history are necessary to one another. The historian without his facts is rootless and futile; the facts without their historian are dead and meaningless. My first answer therefore to the question, What is History?, is that it is a continuous process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialogue between the present and the past.

— E. H. Carr What is History? (1961)

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History

More quotes by E. H. Carr

It is nonsense to say that generalization is foreign to history; history thrives on generalizations.

What is History? (1961)

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

The renewed interest of the past two decades in "the rights of man", itself the product of notorious historical events, shows that mankind is at another of the great turning-points of history.

Rights and Obligations (1949)

Recognition of the truth behind the over-statements of revolutionary propaganda has long penetrated to circles which cannot be brought by any stretch of imagination within the orbit of socialism.

Rights and Obligations (1949)

In short, with the triumph of the industrial revolution and its inevitable consequence, the rise of the class-conscious proletariat, nothing could ever be the same again-not even political revolutions.

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A generation which ignores history has no past —and no future.

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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

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If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future.

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I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, — so good night!

Thomas Jefferson

Attribution

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