Jonathan Evison Quotes

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

No one ever really 'learns' from history, because choices never present themselves in exactly the same way, and because you can always choose similarities and differences to fit current needs.

History is too serious to be left to historians.

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

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

History justifies whatever we want it to. It teaches absolutely nothing, for it contains everything and gives examples of everything.

Who owns history? Everyone and no one--which is why the study of the past is a constantly evolving, never-ending journey of discovery.

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

Leave history to historians.

Whatever can be noted historically can be found within history.

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.

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

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

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

I think history is continuous. It doesn't begin or end on Pearl Harbor Day or the day Lyndon Johnson withdraws from the presidency or on 9/11. You have to learn from the past but not be imprisoned by it. You need to take counsel of history but never be imprisoned by it.

History is more or less bunk.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

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

As someone who has long loved history and reads a lot of history, especially when you get a distance like 130 years, these people can seem almost mythical, and you need something tangible to make them real.

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.

The problem of telling contemporary history is that your message gets outdated.

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

A key goal for an author of history is to persuade his or her readers to forget what they know and to relive the world as it unfolded for characters of the time - with outcomes uncertain.

History is, of course, a made thing. It does not exist by itself in anything like a recognizable form.

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them