Mason Cooley Quotes

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.

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

The contemporary historian never writes such a true history as the historian of a later generation.

History is so indifferently rich, that a case for almost any conclusion from it can be made by a selection of instances.

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.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

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 a set of lies agreed upon.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

Confronted by an unknowable, historians demand evidence, witnesses, corroboration.

Even the most meticulous historians work subjectively. The historian's point of view, his or her selection of subject and sources, the emphasis, the tone - all of these lead to subjective history, inevitably so. I do not say this as a criticism, merely as an observation.

The easiest way of change history is to become a historian.

Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.

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.

History must speak for itself. A historian is content if he has been able to shed more light.

What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement.

When I was a kid, I thought history was the most boring subject of all. I shouldn't blame my teachers; I should blame me, but I'll blame them.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

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

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

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

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

You're not a historian, but most historians will tell you that they make very discrete judgment as to what facts to omit in order to make their book into some shape, some length that can be managed.

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.