Quotes About Revisionism

Unfortunately, it is also true that the age's interests often color the past with unhistoric hues.

The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime.

For a movement supposedly devoted to conserving the past, conservatives are oh-so-splendid at forgetting their own past.

Under New Labour, only the future is certain. The past keeps changing

One thing that will quickly become clear is that the prevalent 'big picture' of history – shared by modern-day followers of Hobbes and Rousseau alike – has almost nothing to do with the facts.

Now that Ronald Reagan's place in history is secure, liberals are trying to remake him. A pernicious myth is that Reagan and Tip O'Neill were great friends.

What is history? The lie that everyone agrees on.

History is written by the winners.

History is always written by the victor, and the histories of the losing parties belong to the shrinking circle of those who were there.

From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.

Any kind of history you read is basically the winning side telling you the others were bad.

Holocaust denial is not only a falsification of history, it is an expression of anti-Semitism.

Not only is history written by the winners, it is also made by them.

Too many historical writers are the votaries of cults, which, by definition are dedicated to whitewashing warts and hanging halos.

It is the winners who write history - their way.

Revisionism is a healthy historiographical process, and no one, not even revisionists, should be exempt from it.

There's not much place for the loyalists - especially the loyalists who left - in standard American history.

What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end.

If Martin Luther King were here he'd be very surprised at some of the sugar-coated versions of American history presented today.

History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods

History is a capricious creature. It depends on who writes it.

The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada.

From depicting the past, so goes the suspicion, it is a short step to glorifying the past.

History is painted by the winners.