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History Quotes

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History Quotes

“Writing history is a method of getting rid of the past.”

Writing Past History Method Writing History

Book:Criticisms, reflections, and maxims of Goethe: Tr., with an introduction

Source: Criticisms, reflections, and maxims of Goethe: Tr., with an introduction

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”

“For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.”

Writing Art Past Found Party History Historical Historian Propose Leave Me Alone Leaving The Past

Author:Winston Churchill

“Who does not know that the first law of historical writing is the truth.”

Knows Writing Firsts Doe Law History Historical

Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Some years ago John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in an essay on his efforts at writing a history of economics: 'As one approaches the present, one is filled with a sense of hopelessness; in a year and possibly even a month, there is now more economic comment in the supposedly serious literature than survives from the whole of the thousand years commonly denominated as the Middle Ages ... anyone who claims to be familiar with it all is a confessing liar.' I believe that all physicists would subscribe to the same sentiments regarding their own professional literature. I do at any rate.”

“The men who make history have not time to write it.”

Men Writing History He Man Historical

Author:Klemens von Metternich

“The Whig interpretation of history ... is the tendency in many historians to write on the side of Protestants and Whigs, to praise revolutions provided they have been successful, to emphasise certain principles of progress in the past and to produce a story which is the ratification if not the glorification of the present.”

Source: The Whig interpretation of history

“Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.”

Writing Art Philosophy History Constant Great Writing Rewriting Art Of Writing

Author:John Updike

“We may live without her, and worship without her, but we cannot remember without her. How cold is all history, how lifeless all imagery, compared to that which the living nation writes, and the uncorrupted marble bears!”

Writing May Remember Nations History Cold Bears Worship Architecture Imagery Marble Lifeless

Book:The seven lamps of architecture

Source: The seven lamps of architecture

“History is life; he who has not lived, or has lived only enough to write a doctoral dissertation, is too inexperienced with life to write good history.”

Writing Enough History Dissertation Good History

Author:Louis Moreau Gottschalk

“The writing of histories - as Goethe once noted - is one way of getting rid of the weight of the past.... The writing of history liberates us from history.”

Way Writing Past History Weight One Way

Book:History as the Story of Liberty

Source: History as the Story of Liberty

“Africans and persons of African descent must assume the primary responsibility and leadership in historical research....if we are to continue to leave practically all important historical research and writing concerning the black race to the white man, then we must be prepared to accept, uncomplainingly, the white man's point of view.”