George Kitson Clark famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

It's a great historical joke that when the Spanish met the Aztecs, it was a blind date made in serve-you-right heaven. At the time, they were the two most unpleasant cultures in the entire world, and richly deserved each other. Still, the story of how stout Cortes blustered, bullied and bludgeoned his way to collapsing an entire empire with a handful of contagious hoodlums is astonishing.
If the English language had been properly organized ... then there would be a word which meant both 'he' and 'she', and I could write, 'If John or Mary comes heesh will want to play tennis', which would save a lot of trouble.
History is a great deal closer to poetry than is generally realised: in truth, I think, it is in essence the same.
Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.
Every generation tailors history to its taste.
Death should take more care with his paperwork.
It seems to me that more and more we've come to expect less and less from each other, and I think that should change.
Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.
History was a series of decisions about what to tell and a series of accidents about what survived after telling. Not truth, but a historian could search for truth, and the search was as worthy as any other human activity.
History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.

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