A Personal History ([1983] 1984) p. 301
“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”
“History isn't what happened, history is just what historians tell us.”
Source: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
Interview with John Humphrys on The Today Program (23 December 2006) http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listenagain/ram/today2_irving_20061223.ram
“Technicalities are, however, of more interest to historians than to contemporaries.”
Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 22, “We Walked in Clouds” (p. 268)
“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
Time (26 June 2006)
Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)
“The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”
Sect. 39; vol. 2, p. 128; H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (trans.) The Works of Lucian of Samosata.
How to Write History
“For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question.”
Source: Deathworld (1960), p. 113
Context: "What about it, Meta?" he snapped. "No doubts? Do you think that destruction is the only way to end this war?"
"I don't know," she said. "I can't be sure. For the first time in my life I find myself with more than one answer to the same question."
"Congratulations," he said. "It's a sign of growing up."
