I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
It may seem unfashionable to say so, but historians should seize the imagination as well as the intellect. History is, in a sense, a story, a narrative of adventure and of vision, of character and of incident. It is also a portrait of the great general drama of the human spirit.
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.
I would say that the study of history is that which gives man the greatest optimism, for if man were not destined by his Maker to go on until the Kingdom of Heaven is attained, man would have been extinguished long ago by reason of all man's mistakes and frailties.
History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.
I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.
All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That's what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.
History is an account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.
History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.
It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.