Gerry Adams Quotes

One must be careful not to prejudge the past.

Most academic historians accept that historians' own circumstances demand that they tell the story in a particular way, of course. While people wring their hands about 'revisionist' historians; on some level, the correction and amplification of various parts of the past is not 'revisionism' as it is simply the process of any historical writing.

In any case, his judgment and set of values, acting alone or through his assistants, determine not only what is gold and what is dross but the design of the history which he creates out of the metal. The historian decides what is significant, and what is not.

You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.

I think what we should do as historians is understand. And we can have our own views about how things turned out, but I think, in making judgements, we're getting into tricky territory.

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

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

To view current events as a historian is to account for all perspectives, even those of your enemy

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.

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

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

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.

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

When you revise history, you lose it.

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

One duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.

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

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

History requires us to judge the figures of the past not by our moral standards but by those of the ages in which they lived and worked.