A Quote by Lucian

The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.

Lucian

Quote Topics

Happened Historian Task Tell Thing

Quote Author

Lucian
Syrian - Author
125 - 180

The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.

E. L. Doctorow

I was a narrative historian, believing more and more as I matured that the first function of the historian was to answer the child's question, "What happened next?

A. J. P. Taylor

Somebody said 'I've got a task here, can you give it to my girlfriend?' And in the task it said 'Marry me'. It was really emotional and really odd, but that sort of thing's happened a few times, weirdly.

Alex Horne

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

Augustine Birrell

There are some people who will tell you oil is the greatest thing that ever happened to Nigeria. And there are other people who will tell you it's the worst thing that ever happened.

Uzodinma Iweala

Something may have happened before, and yet this thing that happened just after may be so important that you don't even know about the thing that happened before and when you tell your story to yourself, or to someone else, it's going to be told not on the basis necessarily of the time course, but rather on the basis of how it was valued by you.

Antonio Damasio

If you think about it, the historian's task is like that of the detective.

David Herbert Donald

What was the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing.

Peter Straub

The task of the historian is to understand the peoples of the past better than they understand themselves.

Herbert Butterfield

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.

Lloyd deMause

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.

Russell Freedman

I select people to work more closely when they are prepared to and I see that. They don't have to tell me. I know. I will give them a task of some type, and that task becomes the koan between us.

Frederick Lenz

If somebody does a task really badly, then that's better for us than if they do it really well. We always tell people when they get back to the green room after doing a task that they've cocked up, 'You've actually really won that task, because people remember them more than the geniuses.' No one likes the clever people.

Alex Horne

David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism.