A Quote by Idries Shah
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
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If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.
Can one understand politics without understanding history, especially the history of political thought, and will this distinguish political philosophy from some other kinds of philosophy (such as, perhaps, logic) to which the study of history is not integral?
I try not to think about legacy because it is all folly. If you study history, even recent history, you'll find many people who were quite significant in their time but are completely forgotten.
I was actually asked to do the Christmas design for the White House. I thought it would be interesting, given that it has such a rich history, to decorate around some real beautiful oversized images of the history of the White House and the history of the country.
I'm a great reader of history. I love - I have been reading history since I was a kid, and learning the lessons globally of what happened with people.
Do not feel trapped by the facts of your history. Your history is not some set of sacred facts. History is an interpretation, and your history is yours to interpret. To know the history and then reinterpret it gives you additional depth.
The essential matter of history is not what happened but what people thought or said about it.
I've always tried to write California history as American history. The paradox is that New England history is by definition national history, Mid-Atlantic history is national history. We're still suffering from that.
Not all that is presented to us as history has really happened; and what really happened did not actually happen the way it is presented to us; moreover, what really happened is only a small part of all that happened. Everything in history remains uncertain, the largest events as well as the smallest occurrence.
When I went to high school - that's about as far as I got - reading my U.S. history textbook, well, I got the history of the ruling class. I got the history of the generals and the industrialists and the presidents that didn't get caught. How 'bout you? I got all of the history of the people who owned the wealth of the country, but none of the history of the people that created it.
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.
History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.
Won't it be wonderful when black history and native American history and Jewish history and all of U.S. history is taught from one book. Just U.S. history.
I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.
Let's say that history is what happened. The record of what happened is how each individual happens to see those events. They've already been ?ltered. When the historian or biographer takes over, history is no longer exactly what happened, because there has been a process of selection going on; it's impossible to write about anyone, any event, in any period of time, without in some way imposing, even unconsciously, your own standards, your own values.
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