I. F. Stone Quotes

American history is a quagmire, and the more one knows, the quaggier the mire gets.

How real is history? Is it just an enormous soup so full of disparate ingredients that it is uncharacterizable?

History is a tragegy, not a morality tale.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

You can't say history teaches us this or that; it gives us more questions than answers, and many answers to every question.

I don't think I'm morbid by nature. Serious writers have always written about serious subjects. Lighthearted material doesn't appeal to me, and I don't read it. I think I'm a realist, with a realistic sensibility of history and the tragedy of history.

In analyzing history do not be too profound, for often the causes are quite superficial.

Even historians with knowledge of the event, and with the materials before them on which to form a judgment, see but little way into the causes and consequences of the great events in human history.

Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong.

Most historians don't much like generalizations. Indeed, they make a trade of showing that this or that generalization about the past will not work here or there or then.

History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.

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 but a confused heap of facts.

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

History is not melodrama, even if it usually reads like that.

History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.

History proves nothing because it contains everything.

History never looks like history when you are living through it. It always looks confusing and messy, and it always feels uncomfortable.

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.

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.

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".

History after all is the true poetry.