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What is history?
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Voltaire
Jan 7, 2010, 10:15:21 PM1/7/10
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I renounce a study that overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.
History is nothing more than a picture of crimes and misfortunes.
Truly, the history of the Yorkists and Lancastrians and many others is
much like reading the history of highway robbers. only philosophers
should write history. In all nations, history is disfigured by fable,
until at last, philosophy comes to enlighten man. And when it does
finally arrive in the midst of darkness it finds the human mind so
blinded by centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it. It
finds ceremonies, facts and monuments heaped up to prove lies. History
is after all nothing more than a pack of tricks which we play upon the
dead. We transform the past to uplift our wishes for the future, and
in the upshot, history
proves that anything can be proved by history.
History is nothing more than a picture of crimes and misfortunes.
Truly, the history of the Yorkists and Lancastrians and many others is
much like reading the history of highway robbers. only philosophers
should write history. In all nations, history is disfigured by fable,
until at last, philosophy comes to enlighten man. And when it does
finally arrive in the midst of darkness it finds the human mind so
blinded by centuries of error, that it can hardly undeceive it. It
finds ceremonies, facts and monuments heaped up to prove lies. History
is after all nothing more than a pack of tricks which we play upon the
dead. We transform the past to uplift our wishes for the future, and
in the upshot, history
proves that anything can be proved by history.
Ulysses at Langdale Tarn
Jan 8, 2010, 1:45:49 AM1/8/10
to
~~~~~
Only a French intellectual would dismiss history as a sort of
jaded literature composed by bottom feeders. The English do not
consign recorded history to the status of yellow journalism.
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" remains a
cornerstone of historical scholarship. Ditto for Plutarch's "Lives
of the Caesars."
Cheers, David H
~~~~~
Voltaire
Jan 8, 2010, 6:02:00 PM1/8/10
to
On Jan 8, 1:45 am, Ulysses at Langdale Tarn <davidholi...@yahoo.com>
wrote:
wrote:
The French intellectual was right.
Do you challenge the sheer intelligence of the genius who transmuted
anger into fun and fire into light?
Methinks that only a fool would risk that.
Cheers, Voltaire
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