Best 7 quotes of H. A. L. Fisher on MyQuotes

History is one damn thing after another.

I can see only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe.

Nothing commends a radical change to an Englishman more than the belief that it is really conservative.

Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.

The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.

Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations; only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.