Herbert Butterfield Quotes

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

The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word "unhistorical."

If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance.

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain, unless one can. do big things.

Perhaps history is a thing that would stop happening if God held His breath, or could be imagined as turning away to think of something else.

[History is] the very servant of the servants of God, the drudge of all the drudges.

In the last resort, sheer insight is the greatest asset of all.

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

Those people work more wisely who seek to achieve good in their own small corner of the world ... than those who are forever thinking that life is in vain unless one can ... do big things.