Lion Feuchtwanger Quotes

I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures.

While writing books about the past, I think about the present. It's not intentional, but somehow my books end up being written under the sign of a political mood.

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

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

We need history, not to tell us what happened or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain us and make a future possible.

History should be written as philosophy.

The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.

An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

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

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

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

The history of the past interests us only in so far as it illuminates the history of the present.

It's very important to always put things in their historical contexts. It teaches important lessons about the country in question.

Most of us get our history through story.

It may be enough to study history in all its nuance and ambiguity for its own sake. But there is no country free of the need to find new ways of reading the past as an inspiring way of thinking about everything else, including the present.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

The way you 'take history' is also a way of 'making history.'

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.

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.

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

One test of a great work of history is does it make you feel like you have lived through the period

History is what we would make of it.

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

I write to learn the flow of history.