Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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

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

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

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.

Historical! Must it be historical to catch your attention? Even though historicity, like notoriety, denotes nothing more than thatsomething has occurred.

Leave history to historians.

History is more or less bunk.

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

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 too serious to be left to historians.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

I write to learn the flow of history.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

History is an illogical record. It hinges on nothing. It is a story that changes, and has accidents, and recovers with scars.

People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.

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.

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

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think.

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.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

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.