To a historian libraries are food shelter and even muse.

Maya Angelou the famous African American poet historian and civil rights activist who is hailed be many as one of the great voices of contemporary literature believes a struggle only makes a person stronger.

The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.

I'm no politician. I'm an historian who has learned through a lifetime of studying that nothing in the world beats universal education.

In any case his judgment and set of values acting alone or through his assistants determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant and what is not.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.