Rick Perlstein Quotes

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.

I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present.

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

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.

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.

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

In any film there's always a historical implication.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

The task of understanding the past is neverending.

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

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

It would be well if, in studying the past, we could always bear in mind the problems of the present

Writing history is writing the soul of the past...

I write to learn the flow of history.

No two historians offer precisely the same reading of an historical event; if we did, far fewer articles and books would be published.

There is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it.

Our interest in history always reflects our own times.

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history.

History, in illuminating the past, illuminates the present, and in illuminating the present, illuminates the future.

History after all is the true poetry.

The ifs and buts of history...form an insubstantial if intoxicating diet.

A good history covers not only what was done, but the thought that went into the action. You can read the history of a country through its actions.

Leave history to historians.