Advice to Persons About to Write History—Don’t.

Acton’s quip plays on the daunting moral and intellectual burden he believed historical writing entails. As a critic of partisan or providential history, he held historians to an exacting standard: to judge power and wrongdoing without fear or favor, and to ground conclusions in rigorous evidence. Read this way, “Don’t” is not anti-history so much as a warning against the ease with which narrative, ideology, or national loyalty can distort the past. The line also reflects Acton’s own perfectionism—he famously struggled to complete large historical projects—suggesting that anyone tempted to write history should first recognize the discipline’s near-impossible demands for fairness, documentation, and moral seriousness.