We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

You don't observe the past directly, even when you think about the creation account. We can't observe God creating, we can't observe Adam and Eve: we admit that. We're willing to admit our beliefs about the past. But see, what you observe in the present is very different. Even some public school textbooks sort of acknowledge the difference between historical and observational science.

We tend to view history not as it was, but as we think it should have been.

the main thing is to make history not to write it

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

We observe things in the present and then, okay, we're assuming that that's always happened in the past, and we're going to figure out how this happened. You see? There is a difference between what you observed and what happened in the past.

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it 'creative observation.' Creative viewing.

History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.

We want to rewrite the history from our perspective, and not the perspective of what we read, which is often negatively biased towards Africa.

Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.

We learn from history that we don't learn from history!

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

Myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it.

We have to be the storytellers of our own history, present and future.We need to create the reflections we want to see.