Francois Guizot Quotes

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

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

I don't think the revisionist historians are accurate. I think their agendas are clouded by selfishness and anger and rage.

The impartiality of history is not that of the mirror, which merely reflects objects, but of the judge, who sees, listens, and decides.

The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

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

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture; but modern history is not a very satisfactory side-arm in political polemics; it grows less and less so.

Oh do not read history, for that I know must be false.

The voice of history is often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

The historian must not try to know what is truth, if he values his honesty; for if he cares for his truths, he is certain to falsify his facts.

The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.

My opinion is that politicians should be humble in the face of history. And whenever history is a matter of debate, it should be left in the hands of historians and experts.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

I should add that it is open to debate whether what we call the writing of history these days is truly scientific.

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.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

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

It is the job of the historian to say what is likely, and of faith to say what is possible.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

We can be revisionist, and that's a good thing to be at times, but we shouldn't airbrush our history, so we can only make judgments in the objective conditions of that time.

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.

Any child knows that history can only be a reduced representation of reality, but it must be a true one, not distorted by queer lenses.

I find that the history books that we teach our kids with are not fully truthful, in my opinion.

Accuracy is paramount in every detail of a work of history. Here's my rule: Ask yourself, 'Did this thing happen?' If the answer is yes, then it's historical. Then ask, 'Did this thing happen precisely this way?' If the answer is yes, then it's history; if the answer is no, not precisely this way, then it's historical drama.