Peter Greenaway Quotes

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

A lot of what we think of as history is actually just a version of events which may or may not be true.

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

Historians from England will say I am a liar, but history is written by those who have hanged heroes.

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

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

The people who make history are not the people who make it who are there but the people who make it and then write about it.

Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong.

History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

The easiest way of change history is to become a historian.

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.

There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

History may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word.

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

As a historian I understand how histories are written. My enemies will write histories that dismiss me and prove I was unimportant. My friends will write histories that glorify me and prove I was more important than I was. And two generations or three from now, some serious sober historian will write a history that sort of implies I was whoever I was.

I think I regard any history in quotes, because just like science, we're constantly revising science, we're constantly revising history. There's no question that various victors throughout history have flat out lied about certain events or written themselves into things, and then you come along and you find out that this disproves that.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?