Octavia Spencer Quotes

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.

History is not just a story related by a fool.

Nothing is more difficult than to recreate in all its complexity than a distant age, and not only to get it right but make it seem fresh and relevant.

If we do not, as historians, write the history of great events as well as the small stories that make up the past, others will, and they will not necessarily do it well.

The historian is looked upon as objective when he measures the past by the popular opinions of his own time, as subjective when he does not take these opinions for models. That man is thought best fitted to depict a period of the past, who is not in the least affected by that period. But only he who has a share in building up the future can grasp what the past has been, and only when transformed into a work of art can history arouse or even sustain instincts.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.

Of course history is easily manipulated - though that makes it even more important for us to know what actually happened.

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.

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.

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

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. This is what makes the trade of historian so attractive.

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

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them.

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.

Learning from history is impossible if the narrative is wrong.

Most historians are engaged in fiction.

Anyone who says a movie about history is a historical document is crazy.

People bang on all the time about whether what I've done is the truth or not. Well, to me, history is just a series of elaborate fictions.

Only by painting the great panorama of history, can the great history-reading public be entertained or satisfied.

Those who read the fiction assume that, because I'm also a historian, I know what I'm talking about.

History is not only a particular branch of knowledge, but a particular mode and method of knowledge in other branches.

We do NOT know the past in chronological sequence. It may be convenient to lay it out anesthetized on the table with dates pasted on here and there, but what we know we know by ripples and spirals eddying out from us and from our own time.

Many scholars have complained of our tendency to see history only in conflicts, but I am not convinced they are right. It is in conflict that our values are exposed.