• If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.

    Allan Nevins: If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring.  Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.
    Allan Nevins (1975). “Allan Nevins on history”