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

It may be said of many palaeontologists, as Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper said recently of 18th century historians: "Their most serious error was to measure the past by the present". — D. V. Ager

The working class positively benefited from Hitler's rule, under which the standard of living was raised till it became the highest in Europe. — Hugh 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

When I was released by the Americans I read historian Trevor Roper's book, 'The Last Days of Hitler'. Throughout the book like a red line, runs an eyewitness report by Hanna Reitsch about the final days in the bunker. I never said it. I never wrote it. I never signed it. It was something they invented. Hitler died with total dignity.. — Hanna Reitsch

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