Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

I would never lie to anyone about history.

History is not history unless it is the truth.

Who does not know that the first law of historical writing is the truth.

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

So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history.

The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.

If you tell a true story, you can't be wrong.

Truth, also is the pursuit of it.

Teachers don't tell us the truth about historical people. If we knew the truth, parents couldn't hold their lives up as examples.

The lovers of romance can go elsewhere for satisfaction but where can the lovers of truth turn if not to history?

Truth is a big concept.

I was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that's it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called 'The Truth'.

And if that isn't the truth, it would be a lie.

Intellectual honesty is the quality that the public in free countries always has expected of historians; much more than that it does not expect, nor often get.

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth.

Fact-checking doesn't exist primarily because some of us are liars and cheats. It exists because writers will be writers, much as they may mean to be historians.

I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to 'truthiness.'

I haven't exaggerated anything, I've stuck to the facts.

The first qualification for a historian is to have no ability to invent.

A writer's job is to tell the truth.

It becomes him that writes an History, sometimes to extol enemies in his praises, when their praise worthy actions bespeak it, and at the same time to reprove the best friends, when their deeds appear worthy of a reproof; in-as-much as History is good for nothing, if truth (which is the very eye of the animal) be not in it.

Lies are beginning to be solidified and made into historical fact…. The truth is all I want for history.

The good historian is not for any time or any country: while he loves his fatherland, he never flatters it in anything.

Historians desiring to write the actions of men, ought to set down the simple truth, and not say anything for love or hatred

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.