Leopold von Ranke

“To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire: It wants only to show what actually happened.”

“Every epoch is immediate to God.”

“The strict presentation of the facts, contingent and unattractive though they may be, is without doubt the supreme law.”

“The main thing is to get a true and lively idea of the past.”

“Universal history is the history of the relations between the leading nations.”

“History is not a branch of literature.”

“The state is a spiritual substance.”

“The historian is not a judge of the past but a simple narrator of what happened.”