Donald Sassoon Quotes

History is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.

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.

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

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.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

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

Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

History in its broadest aspect is a record of man's migrations from one environment to another.

The history of the past, a hundred years from now, won't be the history of the past that we learned in school because much more will have been revealed, and adjectives we can't even imagine will have been brought to bear on what we did learn in school.

History is the history of human behavior, and human behavior is the raw material of fiction. Most people recognize that novelists do research to get the facts right - how a glove factory works, for example, or how courtesans in imperial Japan dressed.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.

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.

One faces the future with one's past.

I don't think you should ever run from history. You should learn from it and embrace it.

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.

History isn’t just what happened before we came on the scene. We are a part of history..

Man is a history—making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

No one is free from the history he has inherited.

History is past politics, and politics present history.

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please.