#historian

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward. ↗

— Josef Albers

#backward #create #historians #leave #looking

Fortunately, historians are now beginning to recognise the historic role of Islam as a liberating force for peoples oppressed by the burdens of unjust social systems. ↗

— Aly Khan

#burdens #force #fortunately #historians #historic

You'd have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story, but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don't make movies; we do. ↗

— Dougray Scott

#completely #hell #historians #imagination #make

Recent fads in history and biography have increasingly exalted the aridity of chronology and fact, and have, with some valid reason, rejected romanticizing and the presumption of guessing at the inner thoughts of historical figures. Unfortunately, the result has largely been not to demythologize the past, but merely to dehumanize and depersonalize it. As Roger Mudd has pointed out, 'Too many of today's historians [and biographers] ... seem to have forgotten that the writing of history is a literary art. ↗

— Markham Shaw Pyle

#history #writing #art

Visiting the past is something like visiting a foreign country: they do some things the same and some things differently, but above all else, they make us more aware of what we call 'home. ↗

— John Arnold

#dangerous-games #home

To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#historians #literature #description

Writers of historical fiction are not under the same obligation as historians to find evidence for the statements they make. For us it is sufficient if what we say can't be disproved or shown to be false. ↗

— Barry Unsworth

#evidence #false #fiction #find #historians

It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians. ↗

— Chuck Close

#art #artists #certainly #does #find

If Germany, thanks to Hitler and his successors, were to enslave the European nations and destroy most of the treasures of their past, future historians would certainly pronounce that she had civilized Europe. ↗

— Simone Weil

#civilized #destroy #enslave #europe #european

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present. ↗

— Edmond de Goncourt

#novelists #past #present #story #tell