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.

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.

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

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