Marc Bloch Quotes & Sayings

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding. — Marc Bloch

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines. — Marc Bloch

Thenceforth they thought that, rationally concluded, doubt could become an instrument of knowledge. — Marc Bloch

It is surely not unreasonable to think that this extraordinary immunity [to foreign invasions after the tenth century], of which we have shared the privilege with scarcely any people but the Japanese, was one of the fundamental factors of European civilization, in the deepest sense, in the exact sense of the word. — Marc Bloch

The very names we use to describe ancient ideas or vanished forms of social organization would be quite meaningless if we had not known living men. — Marc Bloch

When it is a question of ascertaining whether or not some human act has really taken place, [historians] cannot be too painstaking. If they proceed to the reasons for that act, they are content with the merest appearance, ordinarily founded upon one of those maxims of common-place psychology which are neither more nor less true than their opposites. — Marc Bloch

History is, in its essentials, the science of change. It knows and it teaches that it is impossible to find two events that are ever exactly alike, because the conditions from which they spring are never identical. — Marc Bloch

The nature of our intelligence is such that it is stimulated far less by the will to know than by the will to understand. — Marc Bloch

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies. — Marc Bloch

Medieval men had little control over their immediate impulses; they were emotionally insensitive to the spectacle of pain, and they had small regard for human life, which they saw only as a transitory state before Eternity; moreover, they were very prone to make it a point of honor to display their physical strength in an almost animal way (411) — Marc Bloch

The ABC of our profession is to avoid these large abstract terms in order to try to discover behind them the only concrete realities, which are human beings. — Marc Bloch