Quotes About Revisionism

Hindsight has a way of corrupting people's memories, inviting them to view a past event not as it actually occurred but as they wished it had occurred given the ultimate result.

The United States of Andrew Jackson or George Washington is not the United States of Frederick Douglass or Sitting Bull. But we present our history from the perspective of the winners, from those in power

I made a mistake when I said there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz.

History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. . . . History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.

We should not delude ourselves into thinking that our historical narratives, as commonly constructed, are anything more than retrofits.

how far history is distorted by the dubious benefit of hindsight.

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

when the victors rewrite history, it's just another kind of war, waged after the battlefield killing is done to murder the memory of the defeated.

History ain't what it is. It's what some writer wanted it to be.

I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.

National Standards was not a narrative of past events but was leftwing revisionism and Political Correctness.

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

James M. McPherson

In the 1920s, Florida and other Southern states passed laws requiring "Securing a Correct History of the U.S., Including a True and Correct History of the Confederacy.

Despite their continuing efforts of denial and revisionist interpretation, however, there is now widespread recognition that the Turkish destruction of the Armenians between 1915 and 1923 stands as the first "total genocide" of the twentieth century.

History is always written by the winners...By its very nature, its always a one-sided account

History is written by the winners

History, in the hands of those who have the most to gain from change, is a formidable weapon. That's why colonizers and imperialists always burned and destroyed the historical accounts of those they conquered. They revise history to parrot one message over and over again, "the way things are now is the way they've always been". The meaning is clear and demoralizing: Don't even think about fighting for change.

An editor is someone dedicated to destroying the work of a creator.

Because history is told by the victors. Everything else falls away.

Societies everywhere have a tendency to construct a genealogically useful past for themselves in which desirable versions of their history are favored and unwanted narratives purged.

History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

This was historical revisionism at its best, and hadn't Sam always specialized in that, hadn't she always said she wished she had a permanent film rolling of their life so she could go back and prove that, yes, he did so say that thing he now denied?