“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”

Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Julian Barnes77

English writer 1946

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“It's wonderful to be able to read a newspaper that tells you what's going to happen--not just what's already happened. Anybody can tell you what's already happened, but the Bible tells you what's going to happen. Newspapers are not really newspapers; they're history papers. They tell you what's already happened--past news. But God has given us a lot of later news about today, the time in which we're living right now, and what's going to happen next. So the Bible is not just a history book, it's a news book. It not only tells you about yesterday, it also tells you about tomorrow.”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

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“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

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“That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

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Source: The Sense of an Ending

“Written history may, in the course of its narrative, use some of the laws established by the various sciences, but its own task remains that of relating the essential sequence of historical action and, qua history, to tell what happened, not why.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: Foundations of Psychohistory (1982), Ch. 2, The Independence of Psychohistory, p. 85.

“The unending quest of historians for understanding the past — that is, 'revisionism' — is what makes history vital and meaningful.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson. "Revisionist Historians" https://web.archive.org/web/20040623155609/http://historians.org/Perspectives/Issues/2003/0309/0309pre1.cfm (September 2003), Perspectives, American Historical Association. <br class="br">2000s

“History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

§ 8.18
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

“It isn't what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it's what we say to ourselves about what happens.”

Pema Chödron (1936) American philosopher

“The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Source: Astonishing X-Men, Volume 2: Dangerous

“History upon Terra tells us what horrors follow upon religious mandates of unlimited reproduction.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 12 (p. 250)

“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”

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Julian Barnes77

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