Voltaire Quotes

History courses made up of all facts and no interpretation are guaranteed to put kids to sleep…. History comes alive when viewed as a patterned story open to ongoing debate.

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

History is the great dust-heap... a pageant and not a philosophy.

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.

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

History is too serious to be left to historians.

I don't think you learn specific lessons from history, but you do learn proportion.

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

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.

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

Every work of history is a combination of argument and narrative. The longer I write, the more I emphasize the narrative, the story, and the less attention I give to the argument. Arguments come and go.

It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality.

All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.

The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.

History may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word.

History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.

History after all is the true poetry.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.

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

I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

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

I discovered that the study of past philosophers is of little use unless our own reality enters into it. Our reality alone allows the thinker's questions to become comprehensible.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

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