Gretel Ehrlich Quotes

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

There is no such thing as a final draft of history.

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.

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

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

History is a big word... History is not the sort of animal you can domesticate.

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

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

I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

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

History is a facsimile of events held together by finally biographical information.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

When you revise history, you lose it.

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

History is the present. That's why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product.

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

Modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them.

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

History is a picture gallery where there are few originals and many copies.