“History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”

—  Gore Vidal

Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s
Context: Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it’s gossip with some point to it. That’s why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

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Gore Vidal photo
Gore Vidal 163
American writer 1925–2012

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Gore Vidal photo

“Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted in Gert Jonkers, "Gore Vidal, the Fantastic Man," Butt, No. 20 (7 April 2007)
2000s

Oscar Wilde photo

“Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.”

Cecil Graham http://books.google.com/books?id=8SzYgCNz-vwC&q="Gossip+is+charming+History+is+merely+gossip+But+scandal+is+gossip+made+tedious+by+morality"&pg=PT52#v=onepage, Act III
Variant: Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)

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“The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

As quoted in The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom (1958) by Herbert Victor Prochnow, p. 190
As quoted in ...
Variant: The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

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“Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.”

Walter Winchell (1897–1972) American gossip journalist

Attributed

Rose Wilder Lane photo

“History is nothing whatever but a record of what living persons have done in the past.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Give Me Liberty (1936)

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“no one ever gossips about the virtues of others”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s
Variant: No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Source: On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (1926), Ch. 2: The Aims of Education, p. 50
Context: The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary forms. Intelligence demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that leads village neighbours to try to peer through curtains after dark has no very high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by a love of knowledge but by malice: no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices. Accordingly most gossip is untrue, but care is taken not to verify it. Our neighbour's sins, like the consolations of religion, are so agreeable that we do not stop to scrutinise the evidence closely.

“Nothing is more surprising than the surprises of history, and nothing more untrustworthy than the uncritical extrapolation of the tendencies of the recent past.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to 1960 (1961), p.8

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