Notable Historians, Posters & Prints “U...-V...-”
educational posters for social studies classrooms, home schools, and theme decor for office.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari
Giambattista Vico

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
b. 7-11-1938; Sugar City, UT

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a historian of early American life and the history of women, and a professor at Harvard University, received the Pulitzer Prize in history for her book A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, (also available as a film).

Ulrich was also a MacArthur Fellow 1992-1997.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quotes ~
• “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
• “Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.”
• “A pioneer is not someone who makes her own soap. She is one who takes up her burdens and walks toward the future.”

Giorgio Vasari
b. 7-30-1511; Tuscany
d. 6-27-1574

Renaissance architect and painter Giorgio Vasari, who coined the term “Renaissance”, is best remembered for his biographies, The Lives of the Artists.

Giorgio Vasari quote ~
• “Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands.”

Giambattista Vico
b. 6-23-1668; Naples, Italy
d. 1-23-1744

Political philosopher, rhetorician, historian, jurist, and professor, Giambattista Vico, was “a critic of modern rationalism and apologist of classical antiquity”. His magnum opus is Principi di Scienza Nuova d'intorno alla Comune Natura delle Nazioni, often published in English as New Science.

Giambattista Vico quotes ~
• “Uniform ideas originating among entire peoples unknown to each other must have a common ground of truth.”
• “Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.”
• “Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.”

Voltaire, née Francois-Marie Arouet
b. 11-21-1694; Paris, France
d. 5-30-1778

Voltaire was a prolific writer who produced historic and scientific works along with plays, poetry, novels, essays and pamphlets. In fact, it was his biographical essay on Charles XII of Sweden that won him the position of historian at the king's court.

FYI ~ the name “Voltaire”, which the author adopted in 1718, is an anagram of “AROVET LI,” the Latinized spelling of his surname, Arouet, and the initial letters of “le jeune” (“the younger”).

Voltaire quotes ~
• “What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.”
• “Paradise on earth is where I am.”
• “It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.”
• “The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.”
• “To hold a pen is to be at war.”
• “If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.”