Quotes: Historians

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

There’s certainly more new SF available than when I started writing. That means there’s also more bad SF available. Whether there is also more good is a matter for future historians of the field.

I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years.

Historians don’t really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.

Scholars and historians have dubbed the last 100 years the American Century, and I think there can be little doubt that the Council on Foreign Relations helped to make it so.

You’d have to have one hell of an imagination to completely make up a story, but historians are very anal about what they think should be portrayed on screen. Thankfully they don’t make movies; we do.

I think there’s a tide that tends to carry historians back to the past.

You’re making a movie, not a documentary. If you made a film like the historians would like you to make, you’re not going to go and see it. I’d rather see paint dry.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.