Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper Quotes & Sayings

The death of the spirit which threatens every man unless he is conscious of the danger and has a real purpose which can keep it alive and enable it to thrust its way through the choking weeds and thorns to the air and to the sun — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

To find agreements in one's minority opinions is one of the great pleasures of reading. — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

Summation of Leviathan: "The axiom, fear; the method, logic; the conclusion, despotism." — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

History is not merely what happened. It is what happened in the context of what might have happened. — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

The victory of liberalism enables them to sue their victors. — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

"Historians of every generation, I believe, unless they are pure antiquarians, see history against the background - the controlling background - of current events. They call upon it to explain the problems of their own time, to give to those problems a philosophical context, a continuum in which they may be reduced to proportion and perhaps made intelligible." — Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper