Quotes About Perspective

We do not just risk repeating history if we sweep it under the carpet, we also risk being myopic about our present.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

History is a long and endlessly interesting argument, where evidence is everything and storytelling is everything else.

History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view. Or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field.

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only.

History viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.

History is a pack of lies we play on the dead.

We always admire the other person more after we've tried to do his job.

All historians, even the most scientific, have bias, if in no other sense than the determination not to have any.

Each brain is exposed to different circumstances. It's very likely that your brain is unique in the history of the universe.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

Those who did not live during the years close to 1789 do not know the pleasure of living.

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

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

Biography is history seen through the prism of a person.

If history can do anything it is to remind us that all our judgments are merely relative to time and circumstance.

We can learn from history, but we can also deceive ourselves when we selectively take evidence from the past to justify what we have already made up our minds to do.

Do not applaud me. It is not I who speaks to you, but history which speaks through my mouth. Fustel de

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history.

It is the winners who write history - their way.

It is not a sin to introduce a personal bias that can be recognized and discounted. The sin in historical composition is the organization of the story in such a way that bias cannot be recognized.

History is more or less bunk.