Martin Heidegger Quotes

So often when we historicize material, we use this big wide-angle lens.

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

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

The beauty about history is that it's open to perception.

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

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.

The historian's job is to aggrandize, promoting accident to inevitability and innocuous circumstance to portent.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

There is no such thing as a final draft of history.

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.

Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

History is what we would make of it.

History courses made up of all facts and no interpretation are guaranteed to put kids to sleep…. History comes alive when viewed as a patterned story open to ongoing debate.

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

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

No two historians offer precisely the same reading of an historical event; if we did, far fewer articles and books would be published.

I love and I'm intrigued by what history does to people and to subjects that matter.

History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

People have different ways of interpreting history.

Who owns history? Everyone and no one--which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.