James Harvey Robinson (1863–1936) was an American historian. One of the founders of the “new history,” he significantly broadened historical scholarship concerning the social sciences.
Born in Bloomington, Illinois, Robinson taught European history at Pennsylvania (1891–95) and Columbia (1895–1919.) He wrote highly acclaimed textbooks, collaborating with historian Charles Beard in The Development of Modern Europe (1907,) and published The New History (1911,) in which he called for history to reflect all of the human experience, including scientific, environmental, intellectual, cultural, and social concerns.
Robinson’s major work was a study of human understanding, The Mind in the Making (1921,) which proposed that educational institutions in general and historians in particular approach social problems with a more progressive and a livelier view toward a just social order.
Robinson also produced The Humanizing of Knowledge (1923,) The Ordeal of Civilization (1926,) and The Human Comedy (1937.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by James Harvey Robinson
Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Reason
In its amplest meaning History includes every trace and vestige of everything that man has done or thought since first he appeared on the earth.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: History
Each of us is great insofar as we perceive and act on the infinite possibilities which lie undiscovered and unrecognized about us.
—James Harvey Robinson
Our goal, simply stated, is to be the best.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Excellence
We have unprecedented conditions to deal with and novel adjustments to make—there can be no doubt of that. We also have a great stock of scientific knowledge unknown to our grandfathers with which to operate. So novel are the conditions, so copious the knowledge, that we must undertake the arduous task of reconsidering a great part of the opinions about man and his relations to his fellow men which have been handed down to us by previous generations who lived in far other conditions and possessed far less information about the world and themselves. We have, however, first to create an unprecedented attitude of mind to cope with unprecedented conditions, and to utilize unprecedented knowledge.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Attitude
We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Thoughts, Thought, Thinking
Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Courage
One cannot but wonder at this constantly recurring phrase getting something for nothing, as if it were the peculiar and perverse ambition of disturbers of society. Except for our animal outfit, practically all we have is handed us gratis. Can the most complacent reactionary flatter himself that he invented the art of writing or the printing press, or discovered his religious, economic, and moral convictions, or any of the devices which supply him with meat and raiment or any of the sources of such pleasure as he may derive from literature or the fine arts? In short, civilization is little else than getting something for nothing.
—James Harvey Robinson
Topics: Value
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Henry Adams American Historian
Daniel J. Boorstin American Historian
Jacques Barzun French-born American Historian
Theodore H. White American Journalist
James Truslow Adams American Historian
Will Durant American Historian
David McCullough American Historian
Christopher Lasch American Historian
Russell Lynes American Art Historian
Theodore Roosevelt American Head of State