Lerone Bennett Jr. Quotes

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 too serious to be left to historians.

History is imperfect and biased, and it always, always has omissions. The most common omissions are the bits that the writer of that history took for granted that his readers would know.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

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.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

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

Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.

The ‘facts' of history do not exist for any historian until he creates them, and into every fact that he creates some part of his individual experience must enter. But experience not only furnishes the elements for the image which the sources guide us in forming: it is also the final court of appeal in evaluating the sources themselves.

We often do not get the first draft of history right.

Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong.

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.

I've always been a history buff. It was one of the few subjects at school that really, really caught me. I think you'll find a lot of actors will be interested in history because it sparks your imagination so much. When you enter a period of history, your imagination just goes wild in creating the world, which is really what acting is.

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.

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

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.

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.

History is more or less bunk.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.