J. H. Plumb
The past has always been the handmaid of authority.Collection: Past
History is now strictly organized, powerfully disciplined, but it possesses only a modest educational value and even less conscious social purpose.Collection: Educational
Whether we like it or not, quantification in history is here to stay for reasons which the quantifiers themselves might not actively approve. We are becoming a numerate society: almost instinctively there seems now to be a greater degree of truth in evidence expressed numerically than in any literary evidence, no matter how shaky the statistical evidence, or acute the observing eye.Collection: Truth