Edward Gibbon Quotes

I never did write a biography, and I don't exactly know how to set about it; you see I have to be accurate and keep to the facts, a most difficult thing for a writer of fiction.

I feel that history is in many ways the most important of all subjects because it is about everything and because it's about who we are and how we came to be the way we are.

I don't know if I have writing habits. Writing is impossible and every time I have to do it I kind of forget how.

It is especially difficult to make the case that inequalities of outcomes can be automatically assumed to have been caused by discrimination by dominant majorities against subordinate minorities, when in fact many subordinate minorities have economically outperformed dominant majorities in many countries around the world and in many periods of history.

You are doing something over here and over there someone is telling you a joke, or giving you an important piece of information about sanitation, and no matter how weird the other subject is, there is a connection, or you can make a connection. I’ve always loved history and history is collage, it is a juxtaposition of the good and the bad and the strange, and how you place those sentences together changes the whole mood of a history.

It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment, when one sentiment readily produces another, and both ideas and expressions present themselves at the first summons; but such happiness, the greatest genius does not always obtain; and common writers know it only to such a degree, as to credit its possibility. Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

The will to power which always emanates from individuals or from small minorities in society is in fact a most important driving force in history. The extent of its influence has up to now been regarded far too little, although it has frequently been the determining factor in the shaping of the whole of economic and social life.

It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

The only important thing to realise about history is that it all took place in the last five minutes.

I'm for the dreamers. The only really important things in history have been started by the dreamers. They never know what can't be done.

It is difficult to think of an origin without wanting to go back beyond it.

In expressing briefly my views upon an important subject which has recently agitated the nation..., I fervently hope that the question is at rest and that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions.

The longer one doesn't write, the more difficult it is to communicate.

Poems are not easy to start, and they're not easy to finish. There's a great pleasure in - I wouldn't say ease, but maybe kind of a fascinated ease that accompanies the actual writing of the poem. I find it very difficult to get started.

This may be the most important proposition revealed by history: At the time, no one knew what was coming.

So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.

Berlin is one of my favorite cities in the world. I feel like the energy is very youthful. It has such an important history, including its recent history of unification.

We live in a moment in history in which our privacy may not be important.

Sometimes the easiest-seeming stories to a reader are the hardest kind to write.

In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.

Friedrich Hayek is not an important figure in the history of macroeconomics.

Far more often [than asking the question 'Is it true?'] they [children] have asked me: 'Was he good? Was he wicked?' That is, they were far more concerned to get the Right side and the Wrong side clear. For that is a question equally important in History and in Faerie.

It is difficult to discuss... history.. it is more difficult to talk about today.. simple things…