Samuel Butler Quotes

Theories of history used to be supernatural: the divine ruled time; the hand of God, a special providence, lay behind the fall of each sparrow. If the present differed from the past, it was usually worse: supernatural theories of history tend to involve decline, a fall from grace, the loss of God's favor, corruption.

Though God cannot alter the past, historians can.

Many try to force the past to change.

We don’t get to replay history.

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

History is always changing.

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

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

I believe that God and reality are too big for my poor words.

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

God will use whatever he wants to display his glory. Heavens and stars. History and nations. People and problems.

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.

Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.

The German philosopher Walter Benjamin had the curious notion that we could change the past. For most of us, the past is fixed while the future is open.

History is neither a political fable in which all the brothers are valiant and all the sisters virtuous, nor is it a tabloid expose, full of crimes and follies, signifying nothing but victimization. There is, I must admit, a caustic delight in unveiling the frailties of our Jeffersons and our Lincolns, but the delight turns malevolent when it serves only to strip the American past of anything remarkable or exceptional, or when it demeans or discourages civic engagement and confidence.

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.

It is the champions of "left wing liberal socialism" who shape the tendency towards falsifying the history of socialism. They try to make us believe that the country's past was nothing but mistakes and crimes, keeping silent about the greatest achievements of the past and the present.

A nation creates itself not just with what it remembers, but with what it forgets.

People are very resentful of elements in the history text books that are different from the history textbooks that they studied…. New knowledge has to be incorporated.

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

History is easy to change.

History is written not only for posterity but by posterity as well.

Men live in history as never before …. we make and change history minute by minute. History is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch.

History is the most dangerous substance that the chemistry of the intellect has created…. I makes men dream, intoxicates them, breeds false memories in them, aggravates their responses, takes up their ancient grievances, torments them in their sleep, carries them into the delirium of grandeur or else of persecution, and turns nations bitter, intolerable, and vain.

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