Documentary Evidence Quotes

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

Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.

Biography is the best form of history.

Photography is truth.

Kissinger's monopoly on this historical record has driven many scholars to distraction. Groups of lawyers, scholars, journalists and archivists have used pronunciamento, lawsuit, and other crowbars in a usually vain effort to open Kissinger's Library of Congress cache.

Things we write down are the fragments shored against our ruins. They outlast us, these scraps of words on paper. Like the detritus from the tsunami washing up on the other side of the ocean, writing is what can be salvaged.

All history, so far as it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance.

I believe there should be a witness to every act in this world. So when I write about a film, when I speak volumes about it, I felt there should also be a witness to attest to its credentials, and this is especially for the conviction of future generations.

I think it's important to have some documentation of the past.

It is therefore necessary that memorable things should he committed to writing, and not wholly betaken to slippery memory which seldom yields a certain reckoning.

It is impossible to write ancient history because we do not have enough sources, and impossible to write modern history because we have far too many.

Still, records are documents of a period of time. Most records are documents of two or three years, and I just approached it as a record I was doing over a 20-year period of time.

My feeling is, when you are writing an essay, you don't make anything up. This may be a very Protestant notion, and I'm aware of the fact that memory is fallible, that if I had access to films or some absolute documentary evidence of what happened, it might look different; we get confused and fuzzy.

In a hundred years the historian will understand me better.

I wanted to be videotaped.

I have thousands of tapes, and photos and fliers, letters, posters, artwork - basically everything that ever happened, I kept. I'm not a hoarder, though. I'm sort of a librarian.

I do not start with a full knowledge of the facts; the whole attraction of writing history is to educate myself: it is an exploration into the unknown - 'a journey without maps,' to borrow Graham Greene's phrase.

One problem was that my direct testimony was in writing, so a lot of people didn't get to see it. I hope they see it, because I think it built a very strong case.

History is the science of things which are not repeated.

Good history is a portal to the past.

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it.

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

But then history does not only consist of documents.

History is only written from what remains.

It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.