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This is the great vice of academicism, that it is concerned with ideas rather than with thinking.

If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.

I don't know if a historian or scholar owns an opinion.

I feel slightly uneasy at the way historians are consulted as if history is going to repeat itself. It never does.

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.

Too rigid specialization is almost as bad for a historian's mind, and for his ultimate reputation, as too early an indulgence in broad generalization and synthesis.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.