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If good history is dispassionate history, it must naturally wait until the passions of the period subside.

I love reading about history. Sometimes, I feel I was born in the wrong era. There was more creativity in the air when people were still discovering new worlds.

A feeling for history is almost an essential for writing and appreciating good science fiction, for sensing the connections between the past and future that run through our present.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.

We must admit that history is enjoyable to a large extent because it enables us to pass judgement on the past.

I've always been intrigued by the way history works, the way we decide what is mentioned.

What we normally define as history doesn't interest me. It's a constraint.

I'm basically an optimist because I do think there's this historical modernisation process, and by and large it's been very beneficial to people. But there are blips. History doesn't proceed in a linear way.

History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.