A Quote by Karl Kraus

A historian is not always a prophet facing backwards, but a journalist is always someone who afterwards knew everything beforehand.

Karl Kraus

Quote Topics

Afterwards Always Backwards Beforehand Everything Facing Historian Journalist Knew Prophet Someone

Quote Author

Karl Kraus
Austrian - Writer
April 28, 1874 - June 12, 1936

A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards.

Karl Kraus

I knew that a historian (or a journalist, or anyone telling a story) was forced to choose, out of an infinite number of facts, what to present, what to omit. And that decision inevitably would reflect, whether consciously or not, the interests of the historian.

Howard Zinn

I don't like flirting, and when I love someone, I always give everything, maybe too much. And then you have to work at it all the time. I mean, the first months are always great, but afterwards it becomes hard work. It's not as passionate and crazy.

Eva Green

Through searching out origins, one becomes a crab. The historian looks backwards, and finally he also believes backwards.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am a critic who is pulled toward history. But Bob Dylan himself is a great historian. He is an historian who acts out history. So it always has a personal stamp. It always has a particular timbre. It always has a particular howl, or a moan, in that voice.

Greil Marcus

I can't shoot straight-up. I've always played crooked. One of my coaches says I play backwards. I do everything backwards. I don't have coordination. It's weird to watch me play.

Lou Williams

I worked for a brief spell as a journalist, but soon I discovered that I didn't want to be a journalist - I wanted to be a historian.

Robert Darnton

I'm always doing everything backwards.

Emilia Wickstead

I have always known that it comes from deep within myself. I always knew what sound I wanted, and how I wanted to play. I knew everything, it just had to be developed.

Michael Schenker

The one thing that shaped my life was when I was 15 or 16: I knew I wanted to be a journalist. And not just a journalist, but a journalist in the Middle East, and to go back to the Arab world and try to understand what it meant to be Lebanese.

Anthony Shadid

I'm not a historian, and I wouldn't want to be. I want to change the world. Attack the elite. Overturn the hierarchy. Look at my stories and you'll notice that the villains are always, always, those in power. The heroes are the little people. I hate the establishment. Always have, always will.

Terry Deary

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I learned to run backwards from Muhammad Ali. He told me about running backwards because you try to imitate everything you do in the ring, so sometimes you back up. So you have to train your legs to go backwards.

Sugar Ray Leonard

At an early age my dad - probably because he's a journalist - said: "Just have something to say. Don't just blather. Always have one line in your mind." So, that was always my thing whenever I met someone when I was younger, if ever I got to meet a real celebrity.

Patrick Wilson

There will always be competition, especially in showbiz. There's always someone younger and hungrier standing behind you; there's always someone with more contacts; there's always someone whose grandfather or father is a filmmaker. I think your job is just to be there 100% - you work hard, and there are no shortcuts to success.