Historical Narrative Quotes

Mankind is the grandest and surest artist of all, and history as it clarifies is, in pure fact, an artistic process, a creation in its fullness of the beautiful soul.

There is that great proverb - that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It's not one man's job. It's not one person's job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail - the bravery, even, of the lions.

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

If every nation gets the government it deserves, every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember. All other history defeats itself.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

People say history was written by the winners. No, it wasn't. It was written by the bullies.

The public history of all countries, and all ages, is bet a sort of mask, richly colored. The interior working of the machinery must be foul.

History is all explained by geography.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

Each generation confronts new problems, encounters new facts, and tells our history somewhat differently.

Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.

World history is the history of the great cultures.

As soon as the Confederates laid down their arms, some picked up their pens and began to distort what they had done and why. The resulting mythology took hold of the nation a generation later and persists.

Modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.

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

Australians and New Zealanders don't talk about Gallipoli in terms of invasion. I started talking about it and using that word and at first there were a few people who were getting upset in the same way that in any country, if you work for a newspaper you know exactly the dude you can go and talk to get a knee-jerk reaction when it comes to something to do with the military.

A nation that forgets its past can function no better than an individual with amnesia.

History is always changing.

I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.