Richard Norton Smith Quotes

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

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

The beauty about history is that it's open to perception.

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

We often do not get the first draft of history right.

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

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

There's no such thing as history, only historians. That's how we know about the past.

History is always changing.

But history is neither watchmaking nor cabinet construction. It is an endeavor toward better understanding.

I study history in order to give an interpretation.

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

History is a never ending argument.

History does not produce definitive answers for all time. It is a process.

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

Historians relate not so much what is done as what they would have believed.

Histories are as perfect as the Historian is wise, and is gifted with an eye and a soul.

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. ...History will justify anything. It teaches precisely nothing, for it contains everything and furnishes examples of everything.

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film.

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

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

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.

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.