Marc Bloch quotes

Marc Bloch was a renowned French historian and co-founder of the Annales School of historical writing. His innovative approach emphasized the importance of social, economic, and mental factors in understanding history. He is widely respected for transforming the study of history and for his courageous resistance against fascism during World War II. Here are 11 of his quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past. But a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present...This faculty of understanding the living is, in very truth, the master quality of the historian.

Marc Bloch

For in the last analysis it is human consciousness which is the subject matter of history.

Marc Bloch

Marc Bloch has been a source of inspiration...one way to give some indicaion of my reaction to his work is to provide my thoughts in different decades to his work for...he meant something different to me in different phases of my work and my understanding of what he was saying has shifted considerably.

Marc Bloch

Successive technological revolutions have immeasurably widened the psychological gap between generations. With some reason, perhaps, the man of the age of electricity and of the airplane feels himself removed from his masters.

Marc Bloch