“History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.”

“There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”

“History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.”

“History is not what happened but what you are told has happened, irrespective of what is true.”

“History describes what has happened, poetry what might. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and serious than history; for poetry speaks of what is universal, history of what is particular.”

“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.”