A Quote by Simon Schama

The Bible, for all its riches, is not a document of social history.

Simon Schama

Quote Topics

Bible Document History Riches Social Social History

Quote Author

Simon Schama
British - Historian
Born: February 13, 1945

I mean it's always good to document your history. 'Cos for some strange reason black history has a tendency of getting lost. So I think it's beautiful to have the ability to document it.

Big Daddy Kane

We as Black people have to tell our own stories. We have to document our history. When we allow someone else to document our history the history becomes twisted and we get written out. We get our noses blown off.

Erykah Badu

The Bible is so deep! As the 6th-century church father Gregory put it: "Scripture is like a river...shallow enough...for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough...for the elephant to swim." It's humbling to be involved in projects that make the riches of the Bible accessible to Bible teachers and students.

Martin Manser

The Bible has a human history as well as a divine inspiration. It is a history full of interest, and it is one which all those who value their Bible should know, at least in outline, if only that they may be able to meet the criticisms of sceptics and the ignorant.

Frederic G. Kenyon

We can now say with considerable confidence that the Bible is not a history of anyone's past.... The Bible's "Israel" is a literary fiction... Not only have Adam and Eve and the flood story passed over to mythology, but we can no longer talk about a time of the patriarchs. There never was a "United Monarchy" in history and it is meaningless to speak of pre-exilic prophets and their writings... The Bible deals with the origin traditions of a people who never existed as such

Thomas L. Thompson

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.

A. J. P. Taylor

Can any rational person believe that the Bible is anything but a human document?

Clarence Darrow

Next to the Bible, I think the Constitution is the most important document ever written.

Steve Scalise

I went off to college, a good, middle-class, very proper college, a Brethren institution, where two years of Bible study are required for graduation. It was a good, sound, thorough, but completely biased evaluation of the Bible, and I was delighted with it, because it helped to document my doubts; it gave me a framework within which I could be critical.My independent study continued for 20 years after this. So I do know the Bible very well from a Protestant point of view.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

Samuel Smiles

Wishing will not bring riches. But desiring riches with a state of mind that becomes an obsession, then planning definite ways and means to acquire riches, and backing those plans with persistence which does not recognize failure, will bring riches.

Napoleon Hill

The Bible doesn't speak of "women's rights" in the social-political language we're used to hearing today. Still, that doesn't mean the Bible is silent on the subject.

Carolyn Custis James

If you call yourself an American that means that you have embraced the constitution, because that is what an American is. A citizen of the United States of America is someone who has sworn an oath of allegiance to that document, to the words, to the ideals of that document. Right now we have citizens who don't even understand what that document is.

Scott Ritter

People cheer the Bible, buy the Bible, give the Bible, own the Bible - they just don't actually read the Bible.

John Ortberg

History is one of the only fields where contributions by amateurs are taken seriously, providing you follow the rules and document your sources. In history, it's what you write, not what your credentials are.