T. F. Tout famous quotes

We investigate the past not to deduce practical political lessons, but to find out what really happened.
-- T. F. Tout

#Past #History #Political

Often we want people to pray for us and help us, but we always defeat our object when we look too much to them and lean upon them. The true secret of union is for both to look upon God, and in the act of looking past themselves to Him they are unconsciously united.

The present enables us to understand the past, not the other way round.

History is not another name for the past, as many people imply. It is the name for stories about the past.

In the past, I used to counter any such notions by asking myself: 'Would you really want President Hattersley?' I now find that possibility rather cheers me up. With his chubby, Dickensian features and his knowledge of T.H. Green and other harmless leftish political classics, Hattersley might not be such a bad thing after all.

It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.

Freedom does not always win. This is one of the bitterest lessons of history.

The male clerk with his quill pen and copper-plate handwriting had gone for good. The female short-hand typist took his place. It was a decisive moment in women's emancipation.

Every age cuts and pastes history to suit its own purposes; art always has an ax to grind.

The Civic Culture (and The Civic Culture Revisited) remains the best study of comparative political culture in our time.

I have reaffirmed my political will to work towards national unity.