Karl Kraus Quotes

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

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.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

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.

Historians are dangerous and capable of turning everything upside down. They have to be watched.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read.

Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

History is an illogical record. It hinges on nothing. It is a story that changes, and has accidents, and recovers with scars.

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.

To history has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing the present for the benefit of future ages. To such high offices this work does not aspire. It wants only to show what actually [essentially?] happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen).

Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.

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

History after all is the true poetry.

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

My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

History is only conjecture, and the best historians try to do it as accurately as they can. They try to accurately reassemble the facts and then put them down on paper.

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

It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.