A Quote by Joseph Joubert
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, in some sort, to be malleable.
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I often say time is malleable, but the reception of an artwork is malleable too. When the culture changes, the view and the way you see that work, your perspective, changes. It's something that you can't control. It's sort of daunting and intimidating, but at the same time very fascinating, extremely fascinating.
If you're too close to events, you lose perspective. It is not easy to be fair with the facts and keep your own convictions out of the picture. It is almost impossible to be both a participant in the events and their observer, witness, interpreter.
I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing.
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.
Art may not have the power to change the course of history, but it can provide a perspective on historical events that needs to be heard, even if it's seldom heeded. After all the temporary influences that once directed the course of history have vanished, great art survives and continues to speak to each generation.
Our imagination just needs space. It's all it needs, that moment where you just sort of stare into the distance where your brain gets to sort of somehow rise up.
There are many instances in science, where those closest to the intricacies of the subject have a more highly developed sense of its intractability than those at some remove. On the other hand, those at too great a distance may, I am well aware, mistake ignorance for perspective.
The power of the story sheds a light and great perspective on well known facts. The power of cinema draws on that collective history.
Working gives you this new perspective. You don't take everything too seriously, and you realise that if you don't do too well on a history test, it's not the end of the world.
The facts of history have been too well rehearsed.
Europe needs to develop a sense of collective history - we need to write books from a European perspective, to teach it in schools as well.
The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.
The primary goal of the so-called nonfiction text is to relay the facts of an event - the facts about a person, the facts of history - which is not why I turned to this genre.
History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another's pain in the heart our own.
I believe that historians and analysts of historical events need the authority of facts supplied by living witnesses to the events, which they make their subject.
The accumulation of facts, even if interesting in themselves, should not constitute the main part of education; these facts, whether they be of classical learning or knick-knacks of history, will be of little use unless the mind has been trained to see them in proper perspective.
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