Herodotus Quotes

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

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.

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

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

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

The historian has a special obligation to sobriety and fidelity to the record.

Historians are responsible not only for the words they write but for the words they don’t write.

History is too serious to be left to historians.

History written today is much more accurate than history written in the 18th century.

Whoever writes on world history, but not as a forensic history, becomes thereby an accomplice.

The idea that historians write the definitive version of something that will last for all time is less current than it used to be.

Creative memory is the historian's most subtle opponent.

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

History is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.

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

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 may never have all the facts, but history always has the last word.

Historians exercise great power and some of them know it. They recreate the past, changing it to fit their own interpretations. Thus, they change the future as well.

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

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time.

Well goodness knows, goodness knows what historians will write.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

While historians may go on attempting grand, sweeping and defining narratives, they work in a time when readers know that another narrative always lies in wait, and that the more intelligent an historian is, the more tentative and self-scrutinizing the tone.

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