# Quote — Philip Roth, The Plot Against America

> Turned the wrong way around, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.

- Author: [Philip Roth](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth.md)
- Book: [The Plot Against America](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth/the-plot-against-america.md)
- Page: 113
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Roth#The_Plot_Against_America_(2004)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth/the-plot-against-america/turned-the-wrong

## More from this book

> There’s a plot afoot all right, and I’ll gladly name the forces propelling it—hysteria, ignorance, malice, stupidity, hatred, and fear. What a repugnant spectacle our country has become! Falsehood, cruelty, and madness everywhere, and brute force in the wings waiting to finish us off.

p. 315 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth/the-plot-against-america/theres-a-plot.md)

> Monty was the most overbearing of my uncles, which probably accounted for why he was also the richest.

p. 122 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth/the-plot-against-america/monty-was-the.md)

> “Because what’s history?” he asked rhetorically when he was in his expansive dinnertime instructional mode. “History is everything that happens everywhere. Even here in Newark. Even here on Summit Avenue. Even what happens in his house to an ordinary man—that’ll be history too someday.”

p. 180 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/philip-roth/the-plot-against-america/because-whats-history.md)