Quotes About Interpretation

There is no history, only histories.

History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

History - an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant

Who owns history? Everyone and no one--which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.

Every generation tailors history to its taste.

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 fables agreed upon.

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.

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

I would say that to put architecture in the chain of history, to be able to interpret and understand why we are where we are, is quite crucial.

Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.

It is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.

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

Religion is the most widely debated and least agreed upon phenomenon of human history.

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction.

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

It's up to history to judge.

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.

I didn't see any difference between being a photographer or being an artist. I didn't make those boundaries. If someone wants to think it's art, that's great, but I'll let history decide.

With my work, I try to delve into the several layers that compose the edifice of history, to take the shadows cast by this model of uniform development to try and understand what lies behind it.

The aim of the historian, like that of the artist, is to enlarge our picture of the world, to give us a new way of looking at things.