The future is dark, the present burdensome. Only the past, dead and buried, bears contemplation.

- Geoffrey Elton

If historians are not skeptical, they are nothing.

- Geoffrey Elton

Since historical reconstruction is a rational process, only justified and indeed possible if it involves the human reason, what we call history is th…

- Geoffrey Elton

History will help to remedy intellectual faults such as excessive concentration on one line of thought, absence of understanding for other points of …

- Geoffrey Elton

When I meet a historian who cannot think that there have been great men, great men moreover in politics, I feel myself in the presence of a bad histo…

- Geoffrey Elton