It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Every historian with professional standards speaks or writes what he believes to be true.
Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false.
To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future.
The duty of a historian is simply to understand and then convey that understanding, no more than that.
I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.
The historian is a prophet looking backward.
I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.
You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction.
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.