Mitch Landrieu Quotes

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

History is too serious to be left to historians.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

History is more or less bunk.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

I don't think you can erase history.

I think that America has an obsession with history, really.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

There are moments in history that people should be reminded of.

While we read history we make history.

I think there's a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.

History is a battleground... but it has always been the case. Remembering is a radical act. Choosing what is important and what belongs in the overstuffed metaphorical dustbin of history is of vital importance.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

I don't think you learn specific lessons from history, but you do learn proportion.

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

History is a picture gallery where there are few originals and many copies.

I like to think I'm a recovering historian.

I prefer my history dead. Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood.

Most of us, I think, are conscious of history swirling around outside the door, but when we're in the house, we're usually not dealing with history. We're not thinking about history.

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

History is a way of interpreting, rather than, say, knowing, the past. It is usually a set of disputes between those who have access to the same sources. It depends on ideology as much as voting in an election does.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

The task of understanding the past is neverending.