History is indeed the witness of the times, the light of truth. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. History is a science, no less and no more. History is past politics and politics present history. We teach history only when it can be made into an entertaining anecdote, a procedure which is about as sound as leaving the teaching of sexual hygiene to a commercial traveller.
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing.
The historian can learn much from the novelist. History is an argument without end. No single man makes history. History cannot be seen just as one cannot see grass growing. It has been said that although God cannot alter the past, historians can.